


Fool's Gold

by scoradh



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:11:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1328014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoradh/pseuds/scoradh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling in love is fine until you hit the ground.</p><p>Written in July 2007.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool's Gold

Diarmuid maintained the quiet opinion that his best friend, Aidan, was the twenty-first century's answer to Blackadder's Baldrick. His plans never ceased to put both of them in the path of extreme danger to both life and limb. Thus Diarmuid was unsurprised to find himself stricken with a bolt of anxiety as they both stood outside the doors of the PE hall, although everything about the situation seemed wholly innocuous.  
  
"It's foolproof!" Aidan hissed.   
  
Diarmuid had heard those words spoken once too often, in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. He rolled his eyes and hung back a little, in case Aidan had booby-trapped the swinging doors. Stranger things had happened.   
  
"That's what you said about Mr Henderson's shed," Diarmuid felt obliged to point out as he trailed behind. "Right up until we fell through the roof."  
  
"Yes, but that was a fluke," said Aidan, dismissing something that might better be described as 'standard practice.' "Using this plan we can meet loads of chicks. And it's _highly_ unlikely that we'll fall through anything."  
  
"Hmm."  
  
"I hate when you go hmm."  
  
"I hate falling through sheds, but you don't hear me complaining." Diarmuid studied the note stuck to the door. It made no mention of gross bodily harm, which Diarmuid took as a good sign.   
  
Neither of them had ever had much luck with the female species. In Aidan's case it was probably due to his unfortunate tendency to call girls 'chicks' to their faces. In his own case, Diarmuid could never be bothered. He meant to get a girlfriend in the same way other people meant to get a haircut, but he'd just never got around to it. So he drifted along, girlfriend-less and with a shaggy mop of hair that had more than once threatened to brush his shoulders. At that point, he was usually attacked by a scissors-wielding sister.  
  
"So, you up for it?" Aidan turned to Diarmuid, his face lit up like a Brown Thomas Christmas tree.   
  
Diarmuid had resolved to turn down the next invitation to yet another of Aidan's mad schemes, but Aidan foiled him with his beseeching expression. Diarmuid hadn't the heart to deny him. Besides, this plan looked almost … well, foolproof.  
  
"All right," he agreed. "But if anyone tries to get me into tights, I'll be gone like a shot."  
  
"A shot. Got it." Aidan nodded. "Onward, soldier. The sign-up's already begun!"  
  
+_+_+  
  
Diarmuid never took much notice of his surroundings, except when they were coming towards him at speed. However, he had a vague notion that the PE hall generally looked more utilitarian and sporty than it did at that precise moment. Swathes of purple cloth covered up the eyesore that was the 1970s climbing frame. Banners bearing two Grecian masks had been unfurled from the basketball hoops. Right in centre court, a large table had been set up. Although effectively disguised by yet more purple cloth, Diarmuid spotted the spindly legs of the prehistoric tables from the storeroom underneath.   
  
One of the English teachers was seated behind the table, scanning lists with an air of great importance. Aidan's demeanour changed to one of obsequious deference as Diarmuid watched; if he'd had a cap he would have doffed it. Grinning, Diarmuid slotted himself behind his taller friend as Aidan approached the table as one would a throne.   
  
"Mrs McCarthy," drawled Aidan. He ran a hand through his corkscrew curls. "We're here to sign up for auditions."  
  
Mrs McCarthy squinted at Aidan through her pink glasses, which had rhinestones dotted around the rim. She looked mightily suspicious, as she had every right to be.  
  
"Aidan Connolly, isn't it?" she asked. "Yes, you were in my CSPE class last year. Didn't you mix glue with washing-up liquid and blow bubbles all over the room when I was called to the office?"  
  
"It was an experiment, Mrs McCarthy." Aidan's eyelashes fluttered at a rate of knots. "I wasn't to know the bubbles would stick."  
  
"Yet you still did it in the next three classes after mine, at which point evidence would suggest that you knew exactly what they'd do." Mrs McCarthy's gaze moved to encompass Diarmuid. "Ah, and your little partner in crime is here also. What are you planning to do? Plant stink-bombs on stage?"  
  
"Nothing of the sort! We just want to be in the play."  
  
"Aidan Connolly, I don't believe you even know what play it _is_ ," said Mrs McCarthy.   
  
"Grease, the musical," interjected Diarmuid. He sent an apologetic smile in Aidan's direction. Aidan breathed out an inaudible sigh of relief.  
  
"It was on the tip of my tongue to say it, before Diarmuid so rudely interrupted me," said Aidan. "So may we put our names down?"  
  
"I suppose there is nothing I can actually do to stop you." Mrs McCarthy pushed up her pink glasses, using a fake nail that was painted a matching shade of fuchsia. "Put your names on this list and come back at four o'clock. We're holding auditions here over the next few afternoons. Any trick-acting or horseplay of any kind out of you, Mr Connolly, and you and your friend will be seeing a lot more of detention and a lot less of the bright lights of Broadway. I personally guarantee it."  
  
"Absolutely, Mrs McCarthy." Aidan beamed. "And may I say what a fetching pair of glasses you're wearing?"  
  
"No, you may not," snapped Mrs McCarthy. "Write down your names and get out!"  
  
With a flourish, Aidan accepted the proffered biro and scrawled his name. Diarmuid noticed it contained a lot more loops than usual. Aidan handed over the pen, winked at Mrs McCarthy and said, "I'll wait for you outside, Diarmuid. Enjoy this special moment in your life."  
  
Diarmuid was about to sign his name after Aidan's when he noticed the heading at the top of the page. He coloured up in confusion. "Um, Mrs McCarthy? This is the list for people who want to try out."  
  
"That's right," said Mrs McCarthy. "You were expecting to get a leading part without auditioning, were you?"  
  
"Er, no." Diarmuid flushed harder. "I was hoping there'd be a list for people who want to just, sort of, help out? Like … paint scenery?"  
  
"Everyone's expected to help out and paint scenery. It's part of the deal." Mrs McCarthy's face softened incrementally. "But if you just want to be a general dogsbody that's fine. You'll always find actors wanting prompters and so on."  
  
"Okay." Diarmuid breathed a sigh of relief. "Do I still need to put my name down then?"  
  
"You might as well," said Mrs McCarthy. "Your friend is going to ask you if you have and you don't look capable of lying to him."  
  
"Right," said Diarmuid, not amused. He scribbled down his name and scrammed. He had a sinking feeling that Mrs McCarthy was laughing at him.  
  
Aidan was lounging against the wall, eyeing up a gaggle of girls who were crowded around the audition notice. They scattered like goslings when Diarmuid burst through the door, but Diarmuid paid them no mind.  
  
"What took you so long? Did you have some kind of sexual epiphany in there?" Aidan wanted to know.  
  
"Shut up," muttered Diarmuid, his blush cemented in place. He ignored Aidan's gleeful smile and the cunning looks of the nearby girls. "Let's just get the hell to class."  
  
"Whatever you say, maestro." Aidan held up his hands in defeat. "Or should that be Mr Robinson?"  
  
"You need help. A lot of it," Diarmuid informed him, before bounding up the steps to the lockers.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Despite Aidan's incessant mumblings on the topic, Diarmuid managed to forget about the impending auditions for the rest of the afternoon. He was aided in this by the fact that, after four years, the teachers had grown wise to Aidan's tactics and forcibly seated him as far as possible from Diarmuid in class.   
  
By the time the final bell rang, Diarmuid was ready for home, chips and his twenty-first viewing of _Fight Club_ – not necessarily in that order. His heart sank in sorry realisation when Aidan bounded up to him, his curls more static than ever with excitement.  
  
"Are you ready to wow the ladies with your dramatic talents?" asked Aidan, punching the air for emphasis.  
  
"Let's just get it over with," sighed Diarmuid. He slung his bag over his shoulder, feeling in it the burden of guilt. He hadn't yet told Aidan that he wasn't planning to _act_ in the play. Aidan seemed to be taking this fact on trust.   
  
As with most things, Diarmuid had only been peripherally aware of the existence of a drama club in their school. He was surprised at the large number of people milling around the PE hall when they arrived. It was mostly comprised of other fifth years, a couple of second years and a few from the exam years, so far as Diarmuid remembered their faces from morning assembly. As he was forced to endure assembly every day, he had nothing to do but look around, see who was in which class and try to avoid getting detention for responding to Aidan's incessant chatter.   
  
"Are you excited?" Aidan was flicking his gaze around, his eyes the size of dinner plates. Clearly there were more than enough girls present to people his imaginary harem.  
  
"I'm glowing in the dark," replied Diarmuid. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder, inadvertently elbowing someone in the side.  
  
"Hey!" said the recipient of the elbow in an aggrieved tone. Diarmuid recognised him as a sixth year: his coppery hair and the ruler-straight scattering of freckles across his nose made him difficult to miss in an assembly line up.  
  
"Sorry, sorry." Diarmuid tucked both his bag and his elbow close to his side, feeling his face prickle with warmth. Diarmuid blushed all the time. If there were such a thing as male teenage menopause, he'd be the headline case.  
  
"Hey, don't have a panic attack," laughed the boy. "You startled me, that's all."  
  
"Yeah, well … sorry." Diarmuid frowned at his shoes. _I should have left the bag in my locker_ , he berated himself. Everyone else seemed to have done so. Still, it would come in handy if he had to make a quick getaway.  
  
"Let's shove to the front, it's starting," urged Aidan.   
  
"Oh no," muttered Diarmuid. Aidan didn't hear, but Diarmuid was sure he heard a low chuckle from behind. He felt his cheeks throb with heat and he cursed his faulty metabolism.  
  
Mrs McCarthy climbed on to a stool and waved a handful of booklets as Martin Cahill would a sawn-off shotgun. Today she was wearing acid-green John Lennon specs. "Silence!" she thundered and, unlike in class, that was exactly what fell.  
  
"I have here the scripts for Grease, this year's winter production," she announced. "Today, we're going to hold the auditions for the major male roles: Danny, Kenickie and the other T-Birds. Tomorrow it'll be the major female roles: Sandy and the Pink Ladies. On Wednesday it'll be an auction for the remaining male roles and bit-parts, and on Thursday the same for the female roles. Do not, I repeat, do not audition for Danny or Sandy unless you think you have a reasonable singing voice! And no, singing in the shower does not count!"   
  
There was an obligatory buzz of laughter. Aidan made a noise like a hyena in heat, but Diarmuid kept his lips resolutely shut.   
  
"The cast list will be up by next Monday. Now, everyone auditioning for major male roles step up. Everyone else, skedaddle."  
  
"Are we hanging around?" asked Diarmuid.  
  
Aidan gave him a look usually reserved for people with jackets that tied in the back. "Of course! I want to try out for Danny. Although getting Kenickie wouldn't be so bad, I suppose."  
  
"Aidan!" protested Diarmuid. "You can't even sing. You got us chucked out of the choir in third class for doing those vulture impressions, remember?"  
  
Aidan dragged him forward by the arm. "Diarmuid Golden, have a little faith. Did you not ever hear the saying, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step?"  
  
"Yeah, and? Does this journey end in you becoming the Fourth Tenor? Because otherwise I can't see how it's applicable."  
  
"I'm not going to let your small-minded meanness drag me down," said Aidan loftily. "Who are you auditioning for?"  
  
Diarmuid winced. The dreaded moment was at hand. "I, er, decided –"  
  
Just as he was about to break down and confess, Mrs McCarthy's strident tones interrupted their conversation. "Mr Kelly and I are ready. Anyone auditioning for Danny or Kenickie please come and collect a script. There'll be ten minutes reading time, which I expect you to spend productively. Readers for the T-Birds may do so during the first set of auditions."   
  
Diarmuid hung back as there was a veritable stampede for scripts. He couldn't understand it, himself. Grease was as old as the hills. While Danny and Kenickie were undeniably cool characters, the cachet of acting in a play was not nearly as translatable to everyday life as a place on a sports team. Then again, Aidan might have spread around his great idea for landing chicks. Diarmuid wasn't the only gullible fool in the establishment – just the most cynical one.  
  
The next hour was like being trapped in an alley full of horny cats. Diarmuid sat against the wall with the T-Bird hopefuls, fighting the urge to stick his fingers in his ears. Not everyone auditioning was terrible, but the majority was and, following established precedents, it drowned out the minority. Diarmuid guessed the honour of playing Danny would go to a boy in his class called Roger Sweeney. He was reputed to be in a band. He did have the voice – plus the unsavoury mien of a drugged rocker after too long on a tour bus – but Diarmuid couldn't envision a more unlikely Danny.  
  
Aidan was on a total high after his turn. Nerves, for him, were something that happened to other people. Such was his self-absorption that he didn't even notice that Diarmuid hadn't gone to fetch a script. Instead, he wanted to run through every aspect of his five minutes of fame. Although Diarmuid had thought Aidan's one of the worst performances against some very strong contenders, he was more than happy to oblige him.  
  
It was six o'clock before Aidan would assent to leaving, even though he'd been free to go since his audition ended. Diarmuid had to bribe him with promises of free double chips before he'd come away. Even at that, it was a tough bargain.  
  
"So, what do you think of my plan so far?" Aidan asked later, through a mouthful of curry sauce.  
  
Diarmuid thought of the thrashing his eardrums had taken and being laughed at by the red-haired sixth year. "Well," he said carefully, "it could be worse."  
  
+_+_+  
  
"I don't want to."  
  
"What do you mean?" Aidan sounded genuinely astonished. "This was the whole point of the plan!"  
  
Diarmuid tried a different tactic. "Mrs McCarthy will be pissed. She wouldn’t have made people leave yesterday if she wanted an audience."  
  
"Then we'll hide in the storeroom. It has a window on to the hall."  
  
"Aidan," exclaimed Diarmuid, "are you trying to score with these girls or get slapped with a restraining order? Because that sounds like stalking!"  
  
"Surveying the landscape and calculating probabilities," corrected Aidan. "But I see how the uninitiated might get confused. You're right – we're better off risking getting chucked out by McCarthy."  
  
"What? I never said that!"  
  
"I know the way your brain works," said Aidan. "Now you toddle off and have fun in Art. I have a Business Studies class to torture."  
  
Diarmuid gripped his A2 folder harder. Sometimes being Aidan's friend was hard work. Diarmuid hated confrontation, but he had no desire to spend another evening in the muggy hall listening to a batch of tone-deaf females being put through their musical paces. Aidan's new plan might not cause him to break any bones, but death via boredom was an imminent threat.  
  
Miss Starr, the art teacher, greeted him warmly. Not many people kept up Art after Junior Cert in Diarmuid’s school, so the class was small and cohesive. It was also, since Aidan's departure the previous summer, a haven of peace and quiet.   
  
"Life drawing today," announced Miss Starr. "I'm going to be the model, so try not to disturb me unless the school is actually burning down. We'll have some sixth years coming in for the second period during their free study, so make room and don’t scare them off. You can talk amongst yourselves as usual, but keep the noise down. Any questions?"  
  
"Media?" asked Diarmuid. Art was the one class in which he didn't feel too embarrassed to ask questions.  
  
"Charcoal, conté chalk or pencil. Your pick. There'll be three half-hour poses, so make sure you get enough paper."  
  
Diarmuid lingered over the open boxes, unable to choose. He was confident in pencils, but they were fiddly work. Charcoal was much freer, but lacked the opportunity to achieve the detail for which Diarmuid strove. Eventually he settled on white conté as being the best of both worlds, and carefully transported five sheets of black sugar paper to his desk.   
  
Diarmuid worked steadily. He didn't gossip with his neighbours or take breaks to check on their work, as the others were wont to do. This was the only time Diarmuid had free from Aidan or familial demands, so he made the most of it.   
  
He had finished his first drawing and made a start on a second by the time the first bell rang. Diarmuid barely heard it. Miss Starr's new pose turned her head away from Diarmuid, and he was having trouble getting the line of her back right. He couldn't rub out the chalk, so he was dabbing lightly at the page, trying to plan the strokes before he drew them.  
  
The door opened and closed a number of times and the babble in the room temporarily increased. Diarmuid didn't notice. He was lost in a world of planes and angles, light and shade, curves and folds. He was only alerted to the new additions when one of them remarked, "Hey, that's really good," and startled him so much he scored a thick line right down the page.  
  
"Shit!" he shouted, drawing a few stares and giggles. He'd been _this_ close to getting the line right. Now the whole page was ruined.  
  
"Wow, I'm sorry. But I guess we're even now, hey?"  
  
Wearing a look of death, Diarmuid turned to face the person who'd ruined his drawing. It turned out to be none other than the red-haired sixth year.  
  
"You're drawing her?" The boy nodded at Miss Starr.  
  
"Who else would I be drawing?" Disappointment tinged Diarmuid’s words with unwarranted bite.   
  
"You've got it." The boy drifted his finger down the accidental line. "That's her back, there; can't you see it?"  
  
Frowning, Diarmuid followed the boy's finger. "Yes! But I – it wasn't on purpose."  
  
"That's how the best stuff happens." The boy gave Diarmuid a sunny smile, showing off slightly crooked but very white teeth. "I'm Ciaran Power, by the way. What's your name?"  
  
"Diarmuid Golden." Unable to stop himself, Diarmuid considered his drawing. Unconsciously his hand began to brush light marks against the paper, which fused into the teacher's wild hairstyle.  
  
"Golden, eh?" Ciaran pinched his chin. "Matches your hair."  
  
"My hair's brown," said Diarmuid absently.  
  
"Not in this light." Ciaran crouched down to study the sketch that Diarmuid had put on the floor. "This one’s excellent too. Are you putting together a portfolio for college?"  
  
Diarmuid shook his head, his hand still moving of its own volition. "I'm only in fifth year."  
  
"Never too early to start." Ciaran stood in one fluid motion. He remained behind Diarmuid long enough for Diarmuid to become aware of it, and start to blush. At long last, Ciaran said, "Well, I'd better take my own advice. I might see you at auditions this evening."  
  
"What?" Diarmuid looked at him, surprised, and wished he hadn't. Eye contact always brought out the worst in his blush. "I thought McCarthy told everyone not auditioning to leave."  
  
Ciaran’s mouth went crinkly when he smiled. "Yes, but that's also her way of testing people's interest. If you're told to leave but you come back anyway, what does that make you?"  
  
Diarmuid thought about it. "Disobedient?"  
  
"Tenacious. Besides –" Ciaran winked "– twenty girls butchering _Hopelessly Devoted to You_ is well worth hearing, wouldn't you agree?" And he strolled off, whistling the tune.  
  
Diarmuid couldn't disagree more. But when Aidan met him after class and said dolorously, "Maybe we should just split this evening –" Diarmuid didn't even let him finish.  
  
"C'mon," he said. "I want to stop at the vending machine before we go to the auditions."  
  
"We're going to the auditions?"  
  
"Aidan, you're my friend. I know you. If I don't come along, you're going to sneak into the storeroom, get nailed for stalking and thrown into jail. I just couldn't live with that much guilt." Diarmuid clapped him on the back. "Like I said. C'mon."  
  
+_+_+  
  
Aidan was in a quiver of anticipation all weekend. Mrs Golden had to forcibly extract him from Diarmuid’s room on Sunday night. It was quite possible that he'd have stayed talking right through the night if Mrs Golden hadn't taken measures to ensure her only son and heir got his beauty sleep.   
  
As it happened, Diarmuid couldn't afford to go to bed until three in the morning. He had Art on Monday and was supposed to finish the preliminary sketches for his latest art project that weekend, not to mention write an essay on the theme of kingship in Macbeth and figure out two pages of logarithms. The essay he could postpone with the tried and tested excuse of having left it at home, and the logs would do for lunchtime. The sketches were another matter. Diarmuid actually wanted to do well in art.  
  
The art project was based around a poem called _The Skunk_ , by Seamus Heaney. After trying to eke some inspiration out of the imagery of orange trees, Californian summers and sex, Diarmuid settled for the obvious choice. Using the watercolours and pencils that he'd managed to keep from his little sisters' prying hands, he'd done several drawings of Pepe Le Pew.   
  
That was the easy part. The difficulty rested in convincing Miss Starr that he hadn't slacked off by merely tracing cartoon stills. From the time Aidan left until Diarmuid fell into bed fully clothed, he messed around with glitter and glue, magazine cut-outs and marbling until he saw skunks instead of grey spots every time he blinked.  
  
Surveying his handiwork in the cold light of day, Diarmuid wasn't sure he'd succeeded. Fortunately Miss Starr was a young teacher and still believed in rewarding students for effort.   
  
Diarmuid couldn't hide his yawns as he walked to school with Aidan, who didn't once stop rhapsodising about his future performance as the greatest Danny since John Travolta. Clearly, he thought he had it in the bag. Although Diarmuid had more than once envied Aidan his enormous reservoirs of confidence, he wondered if it always went hand-in-hand with total self-delusion.  
  
"See you later," said Diarmuid as they parted ways.  
  
"First Business, then the world!" replied Aidan, whose mind was clearly on bigger things than the VAT returns he hadn't filled in for Business Studies homework. No doubt he planned to promise the teacher a free tour of his Hollywood mansion if she'd let him off.   
  
When Diarmuid made his way to his usual place by the art room window, he at first thought someone else had got there before him. There was a piece of crumpled paper sitting on the desk. However, there were none of the usual signs of habituation – no jumper slung across the chair, no bag dumped under the desk, no late homework shoved beneath an art pad to be finished on the sly.   
  
Diarmuid put his folder on the desk to mark his territory, and picked up the piece of paper. It took a moment for him to realise that it had been cunningly folded into the shape of a frog, and that the paper itself was no ordinary photocopying standard. It was thin and silky to the touch, and Diarmuid could see a faint watermark when the light glanced off it.  
  
"Morning, Diarmuid!" said Miss Starr, who had suffered a regrettably irreversible overdose of cheerfulness at some point in her life. "Ooh, that's a nice bit of origami. Did you make it?"  
  
"No. I found it on the desk. Is it yours?" Diarmuid held it out to her, although he was reluctant to relinquish it.   
  
Miss Starr laughed – a tinkly sound that brought to mind wind chimes or the boys' urinals. "Nope! Never got the knack of origami myself. Too fiddly by half. It might have been left here by one of the other classes. Or maybe someone's trying to give you a present!"  
  
"Funny sort of present," muttered Diarmuid. All the same, he stowed the frog in his bag before anyone else could lay claim to it.  
  
Miss Starr did her best to keep the class' nose to the grindstone, but only Diarmuid got much done. She was encouraging about his idea, but as ever wanted him to 'expand on it.' After four years of doing art Diarmuid still didn't know what that meant, but generally making daubs of paint that captured the 'essence' of the subject tended to do the trick.  
  
He soon forgot about the frog, absorbed as he was by trying to render Pepe's essence in Impressionistic acrylics. By the time he left the class, after packing away his materials and sketches, Aidan was waiting by the door.   
  
"I heard on the grapevine that McCarthy's posting up the cast list after lunch. Be still, my beating heart!"  
  
"Aidan," said Diarmuid, "what'll you do if, you know, you don't end up getting a part?"  
  
"Oh. I hadn't considered that possibility." Aidan put his head to one side. "My life will probably be a vale of tears if I don't. I'd have to end it all right there in the PE Hall." He caught a glimpse of Diarmuid’s stricken face. "But don't worry, me old sod! That'll never happen."  
  
"Consider this me worrying," muttered Diarmuid, pulling books out of his locker with such violence that the harmonious balance of old sandwiches, ancient chocolate bars and torn notebooks was nearly undone.   
  
"What's this?" Aidan plucked something green off the front of Diarmuid’s locker. "A love letter?"  
  
"Show me!" Diarmuid’s tone brooked no opposition. Aidan meekly placed his find in Diarmuid’s hand, which was a unique event that Diarmuid wished he had more time to savour. However, his attention was arrested by the frog in his palm.  
  
For a paralysing second he wondered if Aidan had stolen it out of his bag. A ridiculous notion, given that _this_ frog was larger and made from patterned green paper.   
  
"It's a frog," said Diarmuid. What he meant was 'it's another frog,' but saying that aloud would invite too many awkward questions from Aidan, who was an Inquisition in and of himself. Privately he wondered if this meant the other frog had also been destined for his possession, but he wasn't so pushed to know that he'd put Radio Aidan on the case.  
  
"No, Diarmuid, it's a piece of paper in the shape of a frog. What have I told you about jumping to conclu …" Aidan's voice trailed off as a group of girls sauntered past them. "Urk."  
  
"I think her name's Marisa, actually." Diarmuid placed the frog in a safe corner of his locker, behind his pristine homework journal.   
  
"Her name should be Loveliness Universal." Aidan sounded somewhat choked.  
  
"Hardly that," said Diarmuid in his briskest 'combating Aidan's unfulfilled lust' voice. "She has terribly bad breath. Anyway, it's Geography next. Tormenting Mr Daly always cheers you up."  
  
"I am in the grip of a love that dares not speak its name," Aidan asserted, "and nothing shall cleave me from the path of earning her affections!"  
  
"Not even hiding all the OS maps behind the radiator?"  
  
"Okay, maybe that."  
  
+_+_+  
  
Over the next few weeks Diarmuid became accustomed both to finding paper frogs on his locker and attending rehearsals. It seemed that nothing could assuage Aidan's disappointment at being cast as Lenny, however.  
  
"I cannot believe that Ciaran Power got Kenickie," he moaned one day, changing tack. "I know he's good looking and all --"  
  
" _You_ think he's good looking?" Diarmuid was relieved. That meant it wasn't weird that that Diarmuid thought so.  
  
"Of course!" Aidan threw up his hands. "He's like one of those setter dogs, all sleek and red and shiny, only he's human. You know he's the most popular boy in sixth year? And he's a carrot-top, for crying out loud!"  
  
As Aidan had never before demonstrated bias based on people's appearances, Diarmuid rather thought it was the fact that Marisa was playing Rizzo that had got Aidan's back up.  
  
Diarmuid was enjoying himself more than he'd anticipated. Different scenes were rehearsed in rotation, and the rest of the cast members were expected to chip in on the scenery painting. As funds were not flowing in the direction of the drama club, Mrs McCarthy kept things simple. There were a lot of bright panels and not much else.   
  
However, when she saw what Diarmuid had done to the clouds, not to mention the windowsills and gutters with which he'd embellished the blocky buildings, she gave him free rein on the decorating – 'within reason.' Diarmuid took reason to the limits of the paint supply. He spent more than one happy evening looking up photo galleries on the internet to find the perfect model for Grease Lightning.  
  
The costumes were also quite rudimentary. Specialised items like the T-Birds' jackets and poodle skirts were being made to measure, but the cast were encouraged to make up the deficit from their own wardrobes. From an early stage, most of them took this as tacit permission to wear whatever they wanted to rehearsal, not to mention the last three classes after lunch.   
  
Often Diarmuid would pause in his painting and become enthralled by the scenes unfolding before his eyes. Against all expectations, Roger Sweeney made a plausible Danny. As for Ciaran, he _was_ Kenickie. Undeniably a bit cocky in real life, his performances turned the arrogance up full blast and added tight blue jeans to the mix. Diarmuid felt a tightening in his chest whenever Ciaran was onstage with Marisa-as-Rizzo, and later wondered at himself for falling prey to the theatrical lure. In any case, Ciaran was certainly adept at eliciting emotion from his audience.  
  
Aidan mooched over to where Diarmuid was watching the part of the drive-in scene where Kenickie confronted Rizzo about her pregnancy.   
  
"I can leave," said Aidan. "Not only have they not recognised the extent of my mad acting skills, they don't want them for the rest of the evening."  
  
"Right," Diarmuid returned. He was somewhat distracted by Ciaran leaning against the cardboard 'car' prop. There was every chance that it'd fall over under his weight.  
  
"Aren't you coming?"  
  
"Nah, I have to finish this." Diarmuid gestured at the scenery board for the dance scene, which had been denied his attentions for the last quarter of an hour.   
  
"Okay. Guess I'll see you tomorrow then."  
  
"Yeah." Eagerly, Diarmuid turned back to the stage, but Ciaran and Marisa were already being ushered off by Mrs McCarthy to make room for Danny and Sandy.  
  
Diarmuid returned to the backboard. The budget had stretched to streamers and balloons for this scene, so Diarmuid was in somewhat of a quandary. There was no need to paint decorations, and anything too fussy would take away from the characters' bright party costumes.   
  
So far Diarmuid had settled on a plain white background and was beginning to block in the words 'Rydell High School' at the top. He heard the sound of approaching feet and sat back on his heels. He tended to get nervous under people's appraisal. Nerves made his hands shake. Shaky hands meant blotchy lettering – a fate worse than death in Diarmuid’s book.  
  
"How's it coming, Michelangelo?"   
  
Diarmuid bit his lip. He was all too familiar with that slightly mocking drawl by now.  
  
"Fine, thanks," he replied, aware that his voice was a little higher than usual but utterly incapable of doing anything about it.   
  
Ciaran dropped to the floor beside him. "It's a little drab at the moment, don't you think?"  
  
"Yes, but I don't want to make it too busy either," explained Diarmuid. "I need something simple but bold."  
  
Ciaran craned his neck. "What about … a repeating pattern of red megaphones? They seemed to use them a lot in the film."  
  
A slow smile crept on to Diarmuid’s face. "That's perfect! Thank you."  
  
"For what? You would have thought of it eventually." Ciaran held Diarmuid’s gaze for a second too long. Under the subdued lighting, his gelled hair looked like wet bracken. "Besides, I was hoping you'd help me out."  
  
"Help you? How?"  
  
Ciaran flipped his script on to Diarmuid’s lap. "Run lines with me. I need more practice than I get here, and my parents are sick of listening to me."  
  
"Oh, okay." Diarmuid examined the script. "You mean now?"  
  
"No, of course not. Can you come round my house after school on Friday?"   
  
"Yeah, sure." Diarmuid cleared his throat. It didn't feel like there was something stuck in it, but speaking was certainly more of an effort than usual.   
  
" _Are_ you sure?" said Ciaran. "Don't you need to run it past your boyfriend?"  
  
"My who?"  
  
"Tall, skinny guy, hair like Bob Marley's on a wet day?"  
  
"Oh, you mean _Aidan_ ," sighed Diarmuid. "No, of course I don't need to ask him. We're not attached at the hip."  
  
"Good," said Ciaran, with peculiar emphasis. "See you Friday."  
  
"See you," echoed Diarmuid, watching him leave.  
  
He turned back to the backdrop, but his enthusiasm for it had unaccountably dimmed. Resolving to make a fresh start the next day, Diarmuid dunked his brushes in turpentine and grabbed his bag.  
  
On the way home he found he was humming the tune of _Summer Loving._  
  
+_+_+  
  
Diarmuid wasn't shy. Shyness was not a character trait that was well adapted for survival in Aidan's company. However, he could be reticent; and the full power of his reticence was revealed as he accompanied Ciaran back to his house on Friday afternoon.   
  
Diarmuid wasn't used to making conversation. Aidan talked enough for forty-five people. Even when he wanted to, Diarmuid couldn't always get a word in. In consequence, the twenty minute walk was filled with expectant silences during which Diarmuid found himself chewing his lip and wishing he had anything at all to say for himself.  
  
Ciaran’s house looked like a large detached wedding cake. This made Diarmuid even more apprehensive; clearly Ciaran’s people were well-off. He doubted Ciaran had ever kicked cans around on a green the way Diarmuid and Aidan did. Ciaran probably had his own playing field at the back of his house and signed footballs from Beckham and Zidane.  
  
Ciaran unlocked and opened the front door on to a vast, gleaming hall, decorated with Persian rugs and tasteful paintings. It reminded Diarmuid of his orthodontist's waiting room. He'd only had one appointment at the surgery, but it was so vastly unlike anything he knew from home that the memory stuck in his mind.  
  
"No one'll be home for ages yet," said Ciaran, tossing his schoolbag under the hall table. "Do you fancy something to eat or drink?"  
  
Midway into his question Ciaran bent to pet a sleek Siamese cat that had materialised out of nowhere. He was wearing his jeans from the rehearsal. Diarmuid’s heart thumped, drowning out the end of the query – everything, in fact, after 'fancy.'  
  
"What?" he said, more sharply than he'd intended. He'd always made a point never to tell anyone who he fancied, because Aidan would broadcast it around the school in five seconds flat. Not that he had seriously fancied anyone since he was twelve, but that wasn't the point.  
  
"Coke, tea – bourbon?" Ciaran flashed a disarming smile.  
  
"Uh, Coke would be great. Thanks." Diarmuid followed Ciaran into the kitchen. The cat bumped up against his legs and he tried his best not to step on it. The kitchen featured a cooking island with a rack of burnished copper pans hung above it. They were the exact shade of Ciaran’s hair.  
  
"Looks pretty swish, doesn't it?" Ciaran followed Diarmuid’s gaze and laughed. "All for show. Every bit. My mother does all her cooking in a saucepan with no handles that's older than me."  
  
Diarmuid smiled a trifle uncertainly and hopped on to one of the stools. The cat followed him and looked up at him imploringly.   
  
"Chester likes you." Ciaran nodded at the feline. "It's a great honour. He's a very snobby cat."  
  
"I'm, uh, flattered." Awkwardly, Diarmuid leaned down to scratch between Chester's ears. Chester set up a low thrumming noise and arched into the touch.  
  
"You should be." Ciaran leaned across Diarmuid to plant a brimming glass of Coke on the counter. His shirt buttons brushed Diarmuid’s bare arm and he caught his breath. "That cupboard there is the snack bin. Help yourself – I'm just going to get changed."  
  
"Okay." Diarmuid picked up his glass with both hands and sipped from it. He studiously kept his gaze away from Ciaran’s departing jeans, in case his heartbeat should mysteriously start speeding up again.  
  
When he was sure that Ciaran had gone, Diarmuid investigated the snack bin. Fun packs of chocolate bars, bags of crisps, packets of biscuits and a tray of butterfly cakes greeted his gaze. Diarmuid honestly hadn't meant to scavenge for food, but the butterfly cakes were practically begging to be eaten. He sat back down with a cake and his Coke, Chester winding around his ankles, and tried to think about something normal that didn't involve jeans in any way.   
  
He had just about succeeded when Ciaran returned, barefoot and dressed all in black. For a moment Diarmuid found himself understanding where Ciaran’s popularity lay, before his clarity of thought was once again swamped by a mist of confusion.  
  
Ciaran dropped the script on the counter. "Here's what I want you to do: run through as much of the Kenickie's script as possible, while you voice the other parts. I know you don't like to act, but all you need to do is say them. I just want to know if I can remember everything in order."  
  
"That's fine," said Diarmuid, wondering how Ciaran knew about his stage-fright. He'd probably just assumed it.  
  
And before his eyes, he saw Ciaran change. He wrapped Kenickie's personality around himself like a superhero's cloak. Diarmuid, feeling more than a little star-struck, stared at the printed words.   
  
Diarmuid hated having to interrupt Ciaran to correct him, but it was necessary evil on more than one occasion. He didn't look at him when he did, sure that his courage would fail him in the face of direct eye contact. About half-way through, Ciaran called time.  
  
"My throat is starting to get scratchy," he explained. "Do you mind?" He downed the last of Diarmuid’s Coke before Diarmuid could speak. _He must've known I would have said yes anyway_ , thought Diarmuid, shifting around on the stool. It got harder and harder with every passing minute.  
  
"Tell you what –" Ciaran swept the script from Diarmuid’s hands "– let's relocate. My bedroom is far more comfortable. Bring some food if you want."  
  
Diarmuid hesitated, then darted to the cupboard for another butterfly cake. Chester followed him up the stairs, mewling.  
  
When Diarmuid stepped through the doorway of Ciaran’s bedroom, he had to stop and stare. It was as far from Diarmuid’s cramped boxroom as a condo on Venus.   
  
Huge framed posters hung on the walls, originals from the Cavern and Woodstock. A desk occupied the length of one wall and held an enormous television set, a gigantic hi-fi system and a tiny laptop. Two racks of CDs ran from floor to ceiling, which was covered in glow-in-the-dark constellations. An open door led to an ensuite bathroom that matched the size of the one that served Diarmuid’s whole family. It was a frosty shade of white.   
  
"Wow," managed Diarmuid.  
  
"You like it?" Ciaran seemed pleased. "You should have seen it a year ago. It was covered in Batman wallpaper with matching bedcovers. My mother cried when it was all painted over."  
  
Diarmuid thought that his own Garfield wallpaper was probably still up, just hidden beneath mounting piles of possessions and DIY shelving. The only room that had ever been remodelled in his house was the living room. The elimination of the toxic levels of chintz had been a mercy for all concerned.  
  
"Pull up some grass." Ciaran gestured to a sofa – a sofa! In his bedroom! – on to which Diarmuid sank, overawed. Chester leaped up beside him and butted his knee with his head. Diarmuid absent-mindedly patted him as he studied the pattern of stars on the ceiling.  
  
When he got back to Ciaran’s face, Ciaran was smiling. "You'd better eat that cake before Chester does. He has a terrible sweet-tooth, and he's not above using his feline wiles to indulge it."  
  
"Huh? Oh." Diarmuid held his cake out of Chester's paw reach. Chester growled and batted at Diarmuid’s elbow.  
  
Ciaran sat down on his bed, which was a dazzling confection of chrome and severe pinstripe fabric. "So. Diarmuid. Why are you even involved in this play, when you have no interest in taking part in it?"  
  
Diarmuid blamed the intimidating surroundings for his candour. "Aidan thought it'd be a good way to pick up girls," he blurted, and then blushed like he'd never blushed before.  
  
Ciaran stuffed a pillow behind his head and lay back. "Certainly not a unique angle, but probably a profitable one. How many have you picked up so far?"  
  
Diarmuid shrugged, wishing he could dissolve into the sofa. "None yet. Aidan's working on it. He likes Marisa." At Ciaran’s blank expression, he added, "The girl playing Rizzo?"  
  
"Oh, her." Ciaran wrinkled his nose. "Why? She has bad breath. And I mean really bad. I always get the urge to throw Polo mints at her when we're rehearsing."  
  
"Well, love is blind," said Diarmuid.  
  
"And evidently has no sense of smell," said Ciaran. "Has he ever tried, you know, talking to her?"  
  
Diarmuid crumbled the cake between his fingers. "I think he prefers to wow her with his awesome theatrical talent."  
  
"Yes, I can see how that would work," said Ciaran, not sounding at all as if he did. "Wish him good luck from me. If you put a clothes peg on your nose she'd probably be a lovely girl."  
  
Laughter bubbled through Diarmuid’s lips before he could stop it. Ciaran quirked his eyebrows.  
  
"At last. I've been trying to make you laugh all afternoon. My success rate has never taken such a battering."  
  
"Oh! Sorry." Diarmuid could already feel his blush rearing its ugly head.   
  
"You need to stop apologising so much for things that aren't your fault." Ciaran rolled on to his back. "Where were we?"  
  
"Just after the Grease Lightning song," Diarmuid told him, inordinately relieved to be getting off the troublesome topics of laughter and Aidan's extinct love life.  
  
Darkness was falling as Ciaran spoke his last line. Diarmuid was starting to feel hungry, having been denied his usual feed of chips. Ciaran stopped pacing and collapsed on to the sofa beside Diarmuid. He turned his head to look at him, his lax hand brushing Diarmuid’s thigh. Aidan had been known to fall asleep in Diarmuid’s lap and his sisters thought nothing of crawling all over him, so why was Diarmuid so aware of Ciaran’s fingers? They were barely touching him.  
  
"So, how was I?" Ciaran took his hand away to push his hair off his forehead. It only made Diarmuid more confused, because now he wished Ciaran had left it where it was. "Be honest. I can take it."  
  
"You were good," said Diarmuid, "honestly. You had a few slips, but I'm sure you'll iron them out before opening night."  
  
"Really?" Ciaran smiled his crinkly smile. "So you'll help me again?"  
  
Diarmuid suddenly felt as if his entire body was blushing. "Sure. If you want. I don't know how much help I'll be. I mean, how helpful. But yeah."  
  
"Trust me, any audience is better than none." Ciaran’s smile deepened. "And you are considerably better than just any audience." He sprang to his feet. "Do you want to stay for dinner?"  
  
"Nah, I'd better be getting back," said Diarmuid, not without reluctance. "Mam'll be wondering where I've got to."  
  
"Another time." Ciaran knelt before Diarmuid to scoop Chester into his arms. "And I'll get my mother to make more of those butterfly cakes for you."  
  
 _And I thought I already knew how bad it got_ , thought Diarmuid miserably, as heat flooded through him. Even his toes were blushing. "Thanks," he muttered. "See you on Monday."  
  
Diarmuid almost tripped down the stairs when Chester leapt from Ciaran’s arms and tried to follow him. "No, Chester. Stay!" Chester gave him a reproachful look, as if to say 'Hello? I am not a dog.'  
  
Diarmuid leaned against the front door after closing it behind him. He felt absolutely shattered, and he had no idea why. But the prospect of more butterfly cakes was definitely a good one, and the thought of Ciaran’s company was oddly warming. Maybe it was because he wasn't a hyperactive maniac, like Aidan and everyone Diarmuid was related to.  
  
Or maybe Diarmuid just liked him.

+_+_+

After Ciaran nodded hello to Diarmuid on Monday morning, Aidan was all over him to find out the whys and wherefores of the sudden connexion. When Diarmuid told his friend about the private rehearsals, Aidan's reaction was decidedly odd.  
  
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Worry ploughed a line between Aidan's brows. It usually only made an appearance when something really terrible happened, for instance involving blood.  
  
"It's not a matter of good or bad," said Diarmuid. "He just needed someone to listen to him. I was there, he asked, I accepted. The end."  
  
"Aren't you worried about what his motives might be?"  
  
"No, because I know what they are!"  
  
"Really? What are they, then?"  
  
Diarmuid swallowed an impatient hiss. "He wants me to run lines with him. That is his motive. It's all pretty simple, Aidan."  
  
"Hmm," was Aidan's only reply. Diarmuid started to see why his friend found it so annoying when he was on the receiving end.  
  
He was so distracted by Aidan's cautionary diversion that he agreed to Miss Starr's request before hearing anything more than the raised tone at the end of her voice.  
  
"Excellent!" Miss Starr clapped her hands together. "You have such a wonderfully angular face; I'm sure the sixth years will find you quite a challenge! Don't forget to bring some of your own clothes next Thursday, then."  
  
Diarmuid frantically backpedalled. "Um, why?"  
  
"It's part of the exam specifications." Miss Starr pressed a sheet of paper into his hands. "You have to wear what they describe. This time it includes a scarf. Well, that's last year's paper, but I want to simulate real exam conditions. It's the last chance the sixth years have to practice before the mocks."  
  
Diarmuid gulped when he read what was on the paper. He'd just agreed to model for the Leaving Cert art class' life-drawing exam.   
  
"Oh, brilliant," he groaned.  
  
"It's great to hear you so enthused about this!" Mrs Starr beamed. "Now, I must find Juliet … she was my other choice. I've written a note for your teacher that period as well. You won't get marked absent, and you'll be paid for your time."  
  
"Uh," was the level of intelligence Diarmuid achieved in response to that.   
  
He sat down at his usual desk and absently fiddled with the frog that was sitting there. Today it was made of luxurious purple paper, which put Diarmuid in mind of the sort of high-class Christmas wrap that cost ten euro a roll.   
  
As soon as the lesson had properly started, Miss Starr bounced back to Diarmuid’s desk. He regarded her warily, wondering if she was going to sign him up for as a nude model for a Return to Education class next.  
  
"Here's your project marks, Diarmuid," she declared. "Seeing as you handed yours in early, I thought it was only fair to give you the marks early too."  
  
"Oh." Diarmuid gulped. He wondered if the D1 he'd earned for his Macbeth essay was the beginning of a trend.  
  
"It was wonderful – witty and very clever. You really transformed the cartoon ideas you had at first. There were some weaknesses in the preparatory page – you'll need to spend more time on those in future – but overall I think it deserved the A2."  
  
Diarmuid coughed, unsure if he'd heard right. "Did you say an A2?" She probably hadn't; she'd said C2 and his ears had momentarily stopped working and –   
  
"That's right." Miss Starr smiled. "You have great potential, Diarmuid. You just need to make sure you don't let yourself down."  
  
"Um, thanks." Diarmuid stared out of the window as she walked away, stunned and unseeing. An A2? He hadn't got an A since primary school. A warm feeling washed through his blood. If all it took to get As in art was putting in a bit of effort, why had he been slacking for so long?  
  
Diarmuid popped the purple frog into his bag, where it joined a pale pink one from four days previously. At home Diarmuid kept them on a sort of shelf he'd fashioned out of hundreds of old football magazines – relics from the days when he'd fondly imagined he'd be the next Ronaldo. The pink one was the best so far, however, and Diarmuid liked to take it out and look at it during boring classes.   
  
All at once, Diarmuid remembered the evening he'd spent at Ciaran’s house. The rays of the setting sun had shone so strongly for a few minutes that the whole bedroom was burning golden. As quickly as it came, the light dropped away and Ciaran had advanced out of the sudden shadow, curling his lip Kenickie-style.   
  
An odd fluttering began in the pit of Diarmuid’s stomach as he thought of the afternoon audition, and his modelling debut – in front of Ciaran’s class. Ciaran might even have to draw him. For a whole hour, he'd have no choice but to look at him, flicking his gaze from Diarmuid to the page.  
  
Diarmuid hadn't realised he'd begun to draw until the pencil lead snapped, right at the moment in his daydream where Diarmuid’s fantasy blush reached new and untold heights. The page in front of him was just a mass of scribbles – much like his brain.  
  
Shaking his head clear, Diarmuid pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and began to draw in earnest. Visions of more As danced like sugarplums in his head, the sweetest vision he'd had for a long time.  
  
+_+_+   
  
Diarmuid ripped through pile after pile of clothes, becoming more frustrated with every article he tossed over his shoulder. By the time he actually got to his wardrobe – packed with all manner of things that had no other home as well as his clothes – he was overwhelmed. He lay down on the tiny patch of carpet that was still visible and groaned.  
  
Mrs Golden backed into the room carrying a huge pile of laundry. She nearly tripped over her son's feet.   
  
"Diarmuid! What are you doing down there? You gave me the fright of my life."  
  
"I was looking for my grey long-sleeved t-shirt and my red scarf," sighed Diarmuid. "I'm modelling for the art class tomorrow and I have to wear my own clothes, but I can't find them anywhere."  
  
"Hmm." Mrs Golden balanced her laundry atop a teetering stack of books. With unerring resolve, she plunged her arm into a pile of clothes Diarmuid had recently dug through and emerged dangling a grey shirt. "Would this be it?"  
  
"Mam, you're a genius!" Diarmuid leapt to his feet and shook out the shirt, revealing the ingrained crinkles in all their glory.  
  
"I'd best run an iron over that for you." Mrs Golden snapped it out of his hands once more and swiftly folded it up. "As for the scarf, I think Aoife was using it as a hammock for her dolls."  
  
"Thanks, I'll go check." Diarmuid shoved a few heaps aside to make his way to the door.   
  
"Hang on. What did you say you were modelling for again?"  
  
"The art class – the sixth year's Christmas exam, actually. They have to draw from a live model."  
  
"You're still taking art, aren't you?" Mrs Golden's eyes shone brightly from her drawn face. "Is that why you volunteered?"  
  
"I didn't volunteer, the teacher asked me," Diarmuid hastened to clarify.  
  
"That's a turn-up for the books. I thought most of the teachers hated you and Aidan."  
  
"That's just it – Aidan isn't in this class anymore. And guess what?" Pride burst out of Diarmuid like a sprung tap. "I got an A for my last project! I think that's maybe why Miss Starr asked me. She knows I take it seriously."  
  
"Oh, Diarmuid." Mrs Golden sounded sad. "That's wonderful, but wouldn't you be better off getting an A in something useful? Like Maths, or Business Studies? Art won't get you far, not if you want a good job."  
  
"Why do you have to be like that, Mam?" Diarmuid fought to keep his voice from shaking. "Can't you just be glad that I did well for once?"  
  
"I am! It's just …" Mrs Golden looked around the tiny room, her eyes lingering on the peeling wallpaper, the wrenched hinges, the second-hand books on Diarmuid’s fourth-hand desk. "You know we're not well-off, Diarmuid. I want you to have a better life than me or your father had."  
  
Diarmuid hated it when his mother started this speech. Although it was never explicitly stated, he knew that his birth had been the catalyst for a number of unpleasant events: his parents getting married too early. His father abandoning his electrician's apprenticeship for immediate wages as a labourer on a building site. His mother giving up her dream of becoming a model in favour of working a till at Tesco and, in rapid succession, having four more children in exchange for her once stunning good looks.   
  
Diarmuid hated feeling guilty for being alive. He hated the disappointment he saw in his mother's eyes with every report card. She had decided that the only way to improve in life was to get a good education. Her favourite phrase was that no one working at Tesco had a university degree. Diarmuid assumed she excluded the holiday workers to make this catch-all conjecture.   
  
"Please, don't," he said before his mother could get stuck in. "I know what you're going to say. I'm sorry I'm not going to be a doctor or a lawyer and make your lives all better. But you know what? It's not my fault they're like that in the first place." He could feel his face grow hotter as he spoke, until by the last word his entire head was like a boiling kettle. "Sorry, I've got to find that scarf."   
  
Aoife wasn't in the room that she shared with her twin sister when Diarmuid went in. He sat down on the ancient Barbie bedspread that had been recycled from Dervla’s time. Aoife didn't even like Barbies; she preferred Bratz, which seemed to be Barbie's more obnoxious and grammatically incontinent incarnation.   
  
Aoife had appropriated a number of scarves to make a hammock for the few Bratz she owned. Most of them had previously belonged to her cousin, who fancied herself a hairdresser even though she was more of a kamikaze barber. It wasn't much trouble for Diarmuid to extract his scarf, although it sported a suspicious-looking brown stain on one end.   
  
There was no time to wash and dry it before tomorrow. His mother had saved up for a tumble dryer a few years ago, but then Dervla had broken her arm and the money had to go to pay her medical bills. Medical insurance was for rich people, and medical cards for poor. Unfortunately, Diarmuid’s family, living as they did on two nominally steady wages, didn't quite fit into either category.  
  
Diarmuid lay on Aoife’s bed for a while, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling. His mother would be sure to collar him if went back to his own bedroom too soon. He felt bad about what he said, even though it had been festering in his mind for a long time.   
  
He bet that Ciaran Power never had these kinds of problems. When he was in town with Aidan on Saturday, Diarmuid had priced the hi-fi and television that he'd seen in Ciaran’s bedroom. They each cost hundreds of euro. Imagine spending that much money on just one person! The television in Diarmuid’s living room was so old the buttons were worn down to nothing, and it took several good thumps to start it. The girls' Disney videos were run thin. A DVD player was out of the question, of course.  
  
From thinking of Ciaran’s possessions Diarmuid slipped into thinking about Ciaran himself. His clothes were expensive too, but he had one thing that no amount of money could buy – the looks to pull it off. Ciaran could do all his shopping in the Dunnes' sales and still look well. The fact that his jeans were Tommy Hilfiger only meant that they fit perfectly.   
  
Diarmuid sighed out loud as he thought of Ciaran’s jeans. He'd give anything to own a pair like that. Maybe there was something in his mother's argument, after all. If Diarmuid earned a lot of money, he could afford to dress like Ciaran.   
  
With a little jump of his stomach, Diarmuid realised that he was modelling the very next day. Even during his clothes hunt, he'd managed to block the real purpose for finding his best shirt out of his mind. For a best shirt, it wasn't all that great. It had been a gift from his aunt two years ago and, while it still fitted well, it looked more than a little on the raggy side. His jeans were practically antique.  
  
Some people in school dressed daggy because they wanted to. Diarmuid dressed like that because he had no other choice. At least his mother strove to keep all his clothes clean and ironed. Most of Diarmuid’s neighbours didn't even bother to wash themselves, never mind their garments.  
  
 _Tomorrow_ , thought Diarmuid miserably, _is going to be an absolute disaster_.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Diarmuid had purposely refrained from telling Aidan about the modelling until the very last minute, certain that Aidan would make an unholy song and dance about it. He wasn't far wrong. Aidan at first seemed quite impressed by Diarmuid’s task, regaling him with bright futures in which Diarmuid was a Calvin Klein model and Aidan was his manager. Then Aidan happened to ask who he was modelling for.  
  
"The sixth years," said Diarmuid, wondering how many more times he'd have to say it. "Christmas exam."  
  
"I see." Aidan sounded infuriatingly thoughtful. It was as clear a danger sign as the smell of tobacco in a nuclear power plant's no-smoking zone. "And who's in that class?"  
  
"How should I know?" demanded Diarmuid. "Sixth years, I'm guessing. Why?"  
  
"Does Ciaran Power take art?"  
  
"Yes," replied Diarmuid, without thinking.  
  
"And he's a sixth year."  
  
"Yes," repeated Diarmuid. His heart sank at the look on Aidan's face.  
  
"So he'll be in the class you're modelling for?"  
  
"Brilliant deduction, Watson. Now can we move on? I need you to take this note to Mr Daly for me, explaining where I am."  
  
"Sure." Aidan folded up the paper and slipped it into his geography book, without even making a pretence of setting it on fire. That was another bad sign. "Can I ask you one more thing?"  
  
"Can I stop you?"  
  
"Is this nude modelling?"  
  
+_+_+  
  
The exam class hadn't yet arrived when Diarmuid entered the classroom. The other model, Juliet, was muffled in the most fantastic scarf Diarmuid had ever seen: a huge frothy concoction made of five or six types of wool and more colours than a psychedelic high. His own scarf was even less prepossessing by comparison, and Diarmuid fretted over the stain that seemed to have tripled in size. All in all it was almost a relief when the class trooped in.   
  
Diarmuid was kneeling with his arm on a chair for the first pose. Once the class were sitting down Miss Starr darted forward to tilt Diarmuid’s head in another direction, and Diarmuid found himself staring right at Ciaran.  
  
Ciaran sent him a grin of recognition, but Diarmuid didn't dare return it for fear one of the other artists would scream at him for losing his nose shadow. The blush he had no control over; it crept up to his cheeks like a virus, making the room feel very warm and close.   
  
It seemed like forever until the class ended. Diarmuid was sweating profusely. He wouldn’t be surprised if drawings of his forehead were festooned with cartoon-like droplets, the perspiration was so intense. Ciaran’s eyes hadn't stopped raking over him since the exam began. It was perfectly understandable, and Diarmuid knew that the laws of logic and science required Ciaran to have looked away and at his page at least once to complete the drawing. It didn't stop Diarmuid feeling like a specimen under a microscope. A microscope that kept grinning brightly at him.  
  
It was with considerable relief that Diarmuid hopped down from the podium and went to fetch his schoolbag. He'd be earning ten euro for his trouble, which would go towards his CD fund if Aidan didn't discover and squander it on chips first. He wasn't entirely surprised when Ciaran spoke to him – they were friends of a sort, after all – but he still jumped and made a very good stab at toppling a table of first-year clay sculptures.  
  
"You should have kept going," joked Ciaran, his hand on Diarmuid’s arm to steady him. "Those things are a crime against art."  
  
"Ah, they're not so bad," said Diarmuid. He felt almost comfortable, because he was already blushing as hard as he could from all the attention of the last two hours. "I'm sure mine were that bad once."  
  
"I refuse to believe that," said Ciaran. "I had a peek at your folder. It's really good. Are you planning to apply to art college?"  
  
"I, er, hadn't thought about it." Flustered, Diarmuid fiddled with the strap of his bag. The fact was that he had begun to think about it, quite a lot. He just hadn't dared to vocalise his half-formed dreams for fear Aidan or his mother would scoff at them.   
  
Suddenly a warm hand closed on his own. Diarmuid’s eyes widened as Ciaran disentangled his fingers from the strap. His voice was a mint-scented puff against Diarmuid’s cheek.  
  
"Then think about it." Ciaran stepped back and smiled. Diarmuid blinked twice, hard. Maybe he'd imagined what just happened. "Are you coming around tonight to run lines? Not long left now."  
  
"Yeah, sure." Diarmuid wondered why he felt so despondent at the thought. Surely an end to Aidan's excruciating acting attempts was something to be greeted with nothing less than great rejoicing?  
  
"Hey, d’you want to see my drawings before they’re all sealed up?" asked Ciaran. Diarmuid noticed that he was holding a couple of sheets of sugar paper. At Diarmuid’s nod, Ciaran spread them out over a desk.  
  
Diarmuid drew in an amazed breath as he looked down at the swooping lines and rough, hurried cross-hatching. There was a frenzied, impatient quality to the drawing, but that didn't make it any less exceptional. It looked like Diarmuid would if he were … well, if he were beautiful.  
  
"Wow," he said, unable to find any word more appropriate and regretting it sorely. Yet Ciaran didn't seem to want more. His face lit up and his smile grew even wider.   
  
“Thanks,” he said. “Coming from you that means a lot.”  
  
"I'd better get to class," mumbled Diarmuid.  
  
"Yeah, me too." Ciaran let out a gusty sigh. "God, I hate maths. It's the bane of my life."  
  
"Mine too." Diarmuid allowed himself a secret smile. All the money in the world couldn't erase the torture that was calculus. For some reason that was a good thought.  
  
And the way Ciaran’s elbow brushed his as they walked out together – that was good, too.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Diarmuid breathed out plumes of smoke into the frosty air. When he was with Aidan they pretended they were smoking imaginary cigars, but he wouldn’t do something so hopelessly juvenile in Ciaran’s company – especially not when Ciaran was telling him about his application to NCAD and Crawford.  
  
“– I’ve also applied to Slade and St Martin’s through UCAS,” Ciaran was saying, his cheeks stained brilliant pink from the cold. “Not much chance of me getting those, but if you’re not in you can’t win, right? I’m also thinking about Limerick for the CAO. I wouldn’t like to live there, but the art course in LIT is supposed to be pretty good.”  
  
“What’s wrong with Limerick?” Diarmuid wanted to know. “It’s not much smaller than Cork.”  
  
Ciaran wrinkled his nose. “It’s not that – it’s just, I don’t know, I always thought Dublin was the epicentre of culture in this country, with Cork coming second. Besides, what if I got stabbed? What a tragic loss to the art world that would be.”  
  
Diarmuid let out a gurgle of laughter. “Don’t you think there’s way more chance of you getting stabbed in Dublin, with all those gangs roaming around the streets at night?”  
  
“You’ve been watching too much government broadcasting,” Ciaran told him. “Be careful, or you’ll end up like George Lee.”  
  
“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” said Diarmuid. “I’m sure he’s got a contingency plan for when the oil and house prices get so high everyone has to camp out in the streets. Maybe we could surfboard to Hawaii.”  
  
“I think that’s on the other side of America from us, Diarmuid.”  
  
“Is not.”  
  
“Is too. Look at you taking Geography for the Leaving – how is it you don’t know basic things like where Hawaii is?”  
  
“We don’t get taught that,” said Diarmuid sulkily. “But I can tell you all about Norway’s main exports if you like.”  
  
“Maybe later.” Ciaran grinned and Diarmuid looked away. He didn’t like the way his stomach got all jumpy when Ciaran smiled at him. It was almost like Diarmuid had a crush on him or something.   
  
Ciaran unlocked the big oak door. The immaculate stained-glass borders glowed dimly in the wintry grey light. Inside, it was soothingly warm, with each subtly placed radiator pouring out heat. Diarmuid felt his fingers prickle at the temperature change. Sorcha had nicked his gloves two weeks ago for a school trip and proceeded to lose them. Now they were both suffering from windbitten fingers.  
  
Chester came sauntering out of the living room to wind around Diarmuid’s ankles, purring like a Ferrari. Diarmuid scooped to pick him up, and Chester solemnly put his two front paws on Diarmuid’s shoulder.  
  
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ciaran marvelled. “You know he scratches my kid cousins?”  
  
“That’s not surprising,” said Diarmuid. “Little kids are terrible with animals. My twin sisters had a guinea pig once. I think the poor thing had a nervous breakdown before it eventually committed suicide.”  
  
“How can guinea pigs commit suicide?” Ciaran sounded sceptical as he poured two tall glasses of Coke.  
  
“We found it floating in its water trough,” said Diarmuid. “Do you think it just fancied a swim?”  
  
“Maybe it fell.”  
  
Diarmuid made a derisive noise. “I reckon it would have done anything to get away from Aoife and Sorcha. They treated it worse than a Barbie doll. We had no more pets after that.”  
  
“Would you have liked one yourself?” asked Ciaran, and added, “Mum made more butterfly cakes for you, have one.”  
  
“I’d like a dog or a cat,” said Diarmuid, “but not until I have my own place.” He carefully picked up a cake, trying not to spill icing sugar on the shiny tiled floor.   
  
Ciaran waited until Diarmuid had his mouth full to ask, “Can you stay for dinner later? My parents are keen to meet you. I know that’s a good reason to run for the hills, but they’re relatively okay, for parents. Just kind of sad and boring, like all old people.”  
  
“Oh – okay.” Diarmuid surreptitiously swiped at his mouth, dislodging a few crumbs. “I’d better ring my mam and tell her, though.”  
  
“Of course.” Ciaran smiled again, provoking that watery feeling in the pit of Diarmuid’s stomach. He hastily took a large gulp of Coke, and nearly choked as the fizz hit the back of his throat. “Have you your mobile with you, or do you want to borrow mine?”  
  
“I brought mine.” Diarmuid was loath to take it out in front of Ciaran. He’d seen Ciaran’s phone – the newest Motorola model, as sleek and expensive as everything about him. Diarmuid’s phone was five years old and used to belong to his uncle. It was the size of a brick and looked like something Nokia might have recalled due to lack of sales.  
  
But he knew all about pride, too, and he wasn’t about to sponge off Ciaran – even for a twenty-second phone call. Swallowing his shame, Diarmuid got his phone out of his battered schoolbag and rang home.  
  
His oldest sister Siobhan, who was in third year, answered the phone with an unwelcoming, “Yeah?”  
  
“Hey Siobhan, is Mam home?”  
  
“I think so, will I get her?” Siobhan sounded keen to get away, now that she knew it was only her uninteresting brother on the line.  
  
“No, don’t!” Diarmuid practically shouted. That would eat his credit away to nothing, what with the way Siobhan dawdled when asked to do practically anything. “Just tell her I’m not going to be home for dinner, but I’ll be back around eight or nine.”  
  
“You’d better be – it’s your turn to babysit, and I’m going out.”  
  
“Don’t you have revision to do?”  
  
“Duh, my exams finished today.” Diarmuid could practically hear Siobhan rolling her eyes.  
  
“Make sure you tell her.”  
  
“I will, I will. Now get off, I’m waiting for Kev to ring.”  
  
Diarmuid ended the call with his lips compressed into a grim line. Kev was bad news – a twenty year old tearaway with his own souped-up boy racer and more sovereign jewellery than the House of Lords. Aside from any other consideration, Siobhan was far too young for him, not to mention that two girls Diarmuid knew had already had abortions on his account.   
  
But his father was only interested in sitting in front of the television with a beer and a curry after a long day’s work, and his mother was taking as many extra shifts as possible in order to pay for the Christmas presents. Aoife and Sorcha unfortunately still believed in Santa, and expected miracles under the tree come Christmas morning. Neither Mr nor Mrs Golden had the time and energy to fret over Siobhan’s boyfriend.  
  
“Sisters, eh?” Ciaran was looking at him with sympathy. “All of them are a monumental pain in the arse.”  
  
“You have a sister?” Diarmuid was surprised. Ciaran had never mentioned siblings, and the empty, spotlessly clean house suggested that he was an only child.  
  
“Yeah, Rose. She’s in third year law at Trinity – and doesn’t she just know it.” Ciaran rolled his eyes. “You should hear her putting on the Dart accent – which drops as soon as she wants to use the bathroom for twenty-seven hours. Thank God my parents had an ensuite put in for me.”  
  
“My sisters are like that too, even the littlest ones,” said Diarmuid. “Learning by example, I think. Still, there’s always the garden if me and Da are desperate.”  
  
“Good idea,” said Ciaran, “or you could just peg it over here to use mine.”  
  
“Bit of a long way to go,” said Diarmuid, with a small smile. “Are you ready to rehearse?”  
  
“Yup. You got some snacks?”  
  
Diarmuid held aloft a bag of salt and vinegar Walkers. With Chester curled around his shoulders like a fur muff, he climbed the stairs after Ciaran. Ciaran’s grey school trousers weren’t ripped at the hems like Diarmuid’s, and they didn’t look like an iron had boiled them away to nothing. Diarmuid wished he could stop obsessing about Ciaran’s trousers. It wasn’t anywhere approaching normal behaviour. In fact, his thought processes sounded suspiciously like the way Aidan went on about Marisa’s skirts.  
  
Diarmuid sat on the sofa and fiddled with a loose hem in the knee of his trousers. He could almost see the outline of his kneecap through the thin cloth. He listened with half an ear at Ciaran’s lines, and didn’t realise at first when Ciaran had stopped them.  
  
“Are you okay?” repeated Ciaran, and Diarmuid bestirred himself to look down at the script.  
  
“That’s not on here.” Diarmuid frowned. “You’re supposed to say ‘Betty, oh, Betty.’”  
  
“I know that,” said Ciaran with a flash of impatience. “I was talking to you. Are you okay? You look totally zoned out.”  
  
Diarmuid flushed. “I – sorry. I’m a bit distracted, I guess.”  
  
“Is it exams?”  
  
“No.” Diarmuid almost laughed. He didn’t worry about exams – except, lately, for Art, which he was pretty sure he had covered. “I dunno, end of term – you get a bit tired.”  
  
“Wait until next year,” threatened Ciaran. “You don’t know the meaning of tired yet.”  
  
Diarmuid managed a weak smile. “Do you mind if we take a break?”  
  
“Okay. I might change out of these clothes, then.” Ciaran picked up a pair of jeans and a purple Flogging Molly t-shirt and disappeared into the ensuite. Diarmuid took the opportunity to pop open his bag of crisps. Chester meowed plaintively, but totally ignored the crisp Diarmuid laid on the sofa for her.  
  
“What did you think I had in here, Whiskas?” asked Diarmuid, amused. He ate the crisp himself, rolling it around on his tongue so the tart flavour stung his mouth.  
  
When Ciaran emerged, Diarmuid could smell understated aftershave wafting from him. There was something almost feral about it. Diarmuid contrasted it ruefully to the day-old Lynx he wore and shared with his father. Not much of a comparison.  
  
“So we’re rehearsing the scene where Kenickie impregnates Rizzo,” said Ciaran, sinking on to the sofa beside Diarmuid. Diarmuid whisked Chester away just in time.   
  
“I know that.”  
  
“Right, but listen.” There was something intense about Ciaran’s face, or maybe it was just the way he was leaning forward, closer to Diarmuid than he’d ever been before. Not that Diarmuid was keeping track or anything. “You know Marisa has the worst breath since the Thing from the Black Lagoon, so I’ve been ducking out of kissing her. But I need to practice that too.”  
  
“ _You_ need to practice kissing?” Diarmuid raised his eyebrows.   
  
“Not like that!” Ciaran swatted Diarmuid’s arm, momentarily lightening the atmosphere. “My skills are not in the least in doubt, I assure you. But I still have to get all the angles and timing right for the scene, otherwise it’ll just look stupid.”  
  
“All right,” said Diarmuid agreeably. It all made sense.  
  
“Great. So I can kiss you, then?”  
  
“What? No!” Diarmuid jumped back, which was difficult as he was on the edge of the sofa as it was. The arm pressed intimately against his solar plexus. “I’m a boy!”  
  
Ciaran sighed. “I _know_ that. But I somehow think practising with Chester isn’t going to give me the same results, and in case you haven’t noticed there’s no one else around.”  
  
“Huh.” Diarmuid clenched his trembling fingers around his crisp packet, hearing them splinter into a thousand pieces.   
  
“It’s no big deal, Diarmuid.” Ciaran’s smile was playful now. “Haven’t you ever fooled around with another boy before? What about that friend of yours – Angus?”  
  
“Aidan? No, gross.” Diarmuid made a moue of disgust. “Please, it’d be like kissing a hairball.”  
  
“Seriously?” said Ciaran. “Have you got off with _any_ one before?”  
  
“Yeah, a bunch of girls in first and second year.” Diarmuid shrugged. “Not so much lately.”  
  
“Huh. How ‘bout that.” Ciaran lay back on the sofa and stretched out his arm along the back. The tips of his fingers just brushed Diarmuid’s shoulder, and he was reminded forcibly of the last time Ciaran’s hand had touched him on this very sofa. “So no boys, not ever? Not even as a dare?”  
  
“Clearly your class’ dares were crazier than mine,” said Diarmuid, who was relaxing now Ciaran didn’t seem about to leap on him like a hungry panther.   
  
“That’s weird.” Ciaran’s mouth curled up just a little at the corners, making his face look both languid and faintly dangerous. “I had the impression everyone did it at least once.”  
  
“Oh.” Diarmuid stared at his hands. Maybe everyone did – everyone except him. And Aidan, because Aidan would have found it impossible to keep something like that to himself.  
  
Perhaps it was like smoking. Diarmuid had always thought smoking was a rather cool and distinguished thing to do, with a cigarette dangling from your fingers and your lips pursed around the smoke. Then he’d actually tried it, and nearly coughed up a lung. Cigarettes tasted of tar and burnt paper – and that was without even swallowing the smoke. These were the things about which no one told you, because they assumed you knew. Was ‘fooling around’ with other boys de rigeur for most people and, if so, did that make Diarmuid the odd one out?  
  
“Besides,” Ciaran’s voice slid persuasively into his ear, “it’s not like this is for real. You’re pretending to be Rizzo and I’m pretending to be Kenickie.”  
  
Diarmuid took a deep breath. “All right. But just once, okay?”  
  
“Scared you’ll be run away with your passions?” laughed Ciaran. As Diarmuid’s eyes darkened he added, “Fine, just once. Okay ... we’ll take it from ‘Call me Betty.’ Don’t worry about the rest of the dialogue, I’ve got that down.”  
  
Diarmuid nodded, his mouth suddenly too dry to speak. Kissing anyone was a big deal, whether it was for real or not. He was uncomfortably aware that his breath smelled of crisps, that he hadn’t shaved since yesterday and that he had almost forgotten what kissing felt like.  
  
“Oh, one more thing –” Ciaran nudged Diarmuid’s knee with his own “– you have to make like you want this, okay? Rizzo’s into Kenickie, so don’t come over all coy on me.”  
  
“Okay,” Diarmuid managed. His tongue felt far too big for his mouth.  
  
“Okay,” echoed Ciaran, smirking his Kenickie smirk. His hand fell to Diarmuid’s shoulder, rubbing little circles under his collarbone with his thumb. All of a sudden his other hand shot out and curled around Diarmuid’s waist, dragging him closer.  
  
At this point Diarmuid hurriedly shut his eyes. The whole situation was becoming a little too authentic for his liking. Their feet had got all tangled up, and Ciaran had somehow insinuated one leg between Diarmuid’s thighs. It felt hard and hot and disturbingly good. If this was what girls felt like all the time, Diarmuid was very thankful he’d been born a boy.  
  
Then Ciaran was nuzzling the side of his mouth. Diarmuid’s lips fell open in surprise and immediately Ciaran captured them, closing his mouth over Diarmuid’s with surprising gentleness. His lips were both soft and rough: soft near the centre, where they were parted slightly, and chapped around the edges. Diarmuid found he liked the feel of them tickling, just touching his own.  
  
Ciaran took Diarmuid’s hands and guided them to his own hips. Diarmuid could feel denim, thin cloth and a hint of warm skin under his fingertips. This close the scent of Ciaran’s aftershave was heady and intoxicating. Diarmuid let his mouth open wider in an involuntary sigh.  
  
One of Ciaran’s hands knotted in his hair, tugging it almost painfully until Diarmuid tipped his head back and his jaw relaxed. A warm wetness suffused Diarmuid’s lower lip, and before he knew it Ciaran’s tongue had slipped between his lips. It explored his mouth with skilful slowness. Diarmuid’s chin burned as Ciaran’s stubble rasped against it; his hands clenched on Ciaran’s t-shirt, feeling the muscles slide and dip beneath it.  
  
Ciaran’s hand was stroking his neck now, his jaw working as he kissed Diarmuid more deeply, his tongue-work getting messy and wet. His other hand rode up Diarmuid’s side, rumpling his shirt. Diarmuid started as a thumb massaged his nipple, which hardened into a tiny pebble at the touch. His eyes fluttered open, but Ciaran held firm. His tongue coaxed out Diarmuid’s, and Diarmuid became too focused on kissing back to think anything else about Ciaran’s hands except that they were doing amazing things to him.  
  
Diarmuid almost moaned when Ciaran drew his tongue out his mouth, but caught himself in time. He opened his eyes to Ciaran’s face and his mouth, glossy with saliva – _his_ saliva.  
  
“You taste of crisps,” said Ciaran. He licked his lips. “Salt and vinegar?”  
  
“Sorry,” muttered Diarmuid.  
  
Ciaran smiled, brushing his knuckles down Diarmuid’s arm in an oddly intimate gesture. “Did I say I was complaining?”  
  
“What was that – that touching about?” Diarmuid gestured vaguely at his chest, feeling his blush blazing across his cheeks.  
  
“Kenicke feels up Rizzo,” said Ciaran. “As a prelude to more intimate hanky-panky, which I won’t ask you to replicate.”  
  
“Huh,” muttered Diarmuid. He picked up Chester and cuddled him close. Chester rubbed his face against Diarmuid’s chin. Diarmuid couldn’t look at Ciaran, in case Ciaran saw how much he'd liked it. And how much he wanted him to do it again.  
  
He was saved by the bell. “Yoo-hoo, only me!” called a female voice from downstairs. Ciaran stood up, straightening his jeans.  
  
“The mothership has landed,” he intoned. “Are you ready to meet her?”  
  
“Two seconds, I just –” and Diarmuid fled into the ensuite.  
  
No _way_ was he meeting Ciaran’s mother with a hard-on.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Diarmuid had fostered a few vague ideas about what kind of parents could have produced Ciaran. The combination of a huge, fancy house and home-made treats on tap made him think Ciaran’s father must be a high-flying businessman, and his mother a trophy wife who whiled away her days at coffee mornings that lasted all afternoon. Nothing could be further from the truth.  
  
At first, when Diarmuid laid eyes on the whipcord thin woman standing in the kitchen on perilously high heels, her russet hair in a sleek French knot, he wondered if this might be Ciaran’s sister Rose. The woman was chattering away on a tiny mobile in between stirring a saucepan and dicing garlic one-handed. That she had managed to prepare so much food in ten minutes amazed Diarmuid above anything.  
  
“Mum, get off the phone,” Ciaran yelled, grabbing a handful of chopped red peppers and tossing them into his mouth. Diarmuid tracked the movement hungrily, and couldn’t kid himself that it was the peppers he was watching. He’d always hated them.  
  
Mrs Power tucked the mobile into the crook her of her neck. “Just a min, darling, I’m on a conference call to Japan,” she said, mushing her lips together with a muu-muu sound. “Good day, honey?” Without waiting for a reply she returned to firing orders into the phone. Diarmuid recognised a few words from the cartoons on TV – _arigato_ and _gomen_.  
  
Ciaran rolled his eyes and hopped up on to a stool. He patted the one beside him. “She’ll be a while. Help yourself to anything you see, she always makes twice what we need. Makes her feel better about not eating any of it herself.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Diarmuid snagged a piece of cherry tomato – anything to get the taste of Ciaran out of his mouth.  
  
“You don’t think anyone stays that thin without massive self-control, do you?” Ciaran laughed. “By rights Dad and I should be fat as fools from eating for her amusement. It irritates her enormously that we’re not.”  
  
“My mother’s always trying to diet, but she goes back to the chips within three days, without fail.”  
  
“Women,” said Ciaran.  
  
Chester prowled into the kitchen and made a beeline for Diarmuid’s lap. He offered her his tomato-stained fingers to lick, and after a slight hesitation she did so, but with bad grace.  
  
He felt Ciaran’s eyes on him, as the hair lifted on the back of his neck. “Amazing,” said Ciaran. “You have that cat wrapped around your little finger.”  
  
Diarmuid shrugged, uncertain as to what to reply. At that moment Mrs Power closed her phone with a snap and pirouetted to face them. “Aren’t you a marvel?” she said. “I’ve been trying to get Chester into my lap for the last four years, and nothing doing. Not to mention he nearly scratched my hand off when I gave him tuna and tomato cat food the other day. You aren’t by any chance related to Francis of Assisi?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” said Diarmuid, “but I have an uncle called Francis.” He wiped his hand on his trousers and offered it to Mrs Power. “I’m Diarmuid Golden, I go to Ciaran’s school.”  
  
“I know, he’s told us all about you.” Mrs Power smiled, and Diarmuid nearly fell off his chair with the charm wattage. Now he knew where Ciaran got it. “You’ve been very helpful, I hear.” She turned on her son, waving a scolding finger. “You, bold child, should have invited him to dinner sooner.”  
  
“I know.” Ciaran stretched lazily, and Diarmuid snatched his eyes away from the slice of creamy skin under his t-shirt. “What can I say, I’m a brute of no uncertain stature.”  
  
“Your father should be home soon,” said Mrs Power, absent-mindedly patting Ciaran’s shirt smooth. “Is there any word from Rose?”  
  
“Not a single one.” Ciaran arched away from his mother’s fussing hands, inadvertently rubbing the length of his body along Diarmuid’s arm. Diarmuid's fingers trembled in Chester’s fur, and Chester hissed and dug his claws in.  
  
Mrs Power clucked her tongue. “We’ll get a call one morning at seven am expecting us in an hour to pick up a month’s worth of washing, seventeen friends and all those nick-knacks she can’t seem to survive without.” Her eyes landed on Diarmuid once more. “Do you have any brothers and sisters, Diarmuid? Are they as much of a trial to your mother as mine are to me?”  
  
“Yes, four sisters, Mrs Power.” Diarmuid smiled. “My mother says she never stops running after them from the moment she gets up to the moment she goes to sleep.”  
  
“That sounds familiar.” Mrs Power chucked her son under the chin one last time and left him alone, to crumple his t-shirt back to fashion. “And please, call me Orla. I get enough of the ‘Mrs Power’s in the office.”  
  
“Where do you work?” asked Diarmuid, because he was genuinely curious.   
  
“I run my own accountancy firm,” she replied. “Oh! There’s Nick’s car.”  
  
Her own firm, thought Diarmuid dizzily. Ciaran’s father must be even more successful – perhaps owning a string of businesses, the sort that were always being pulled up for tax evasion by the tribunals.  
  
A few minutes later a man with long grey hair shambled through the door. A shabby mac was hanging over his arm, and he was dressed in threadbare 501s and a spectacularly hideous floral shirt. Diarmuid frowned, wondering if he was one of Ciaran’s uncles. This was put to the lie when he walked straight over to Mrs Power and kissed her on the mouth. They rubbed noses, and the man patted Mrs Power’s butt. If this was Ciaran’s uncle, there was something very, very wrong.  
  
“’lo, Ciaran,” said Mr Power. He ambled over to shake his son’s hand. Ciaran didn’t look as surprised as Diarmuid would have been. A second later he realised why, as the two men started a furious thumb war that ended in Mr Power victorious. He bumped fists with his son, and they hooked their little fingers together.  
  
“Hey, Dad. Nearly got you that time.”  
  
“Two seconds longer than yesterday.” Mr Power looked solemn. “I’m getting old.” He turned to Diarmuid. “'allo 'allo, who’s this then? Don’t tell me it’s your long-lost love child, Orla.”  
  
“No, but I’d swap him for ours any day,” Mrs Power called from the oven. “Just look at the way he’s charmed Chester. The boy’s a miracle worker.”  
  
Mr Power clocked Chester, who was sharpening his claws on Diarmuid’s belt. “Ye gods, did you slip some Mogadon into his Kittikat?”  
  
“Dad,” complained Ciaran. “You know Chester won’t touch anything that isn’t Whiskas.”  
  
“That explains why we spend more on his food than on ours,” said Mr Power. “So, you must be Diarmuid then? The one that’s helping our Ciaran become the next Colin Farrell.”  
  
“Yes,” said Diarmuid, at the same time Ciaran said, “Puh-lease. Cillian Murphy, if anyone.”  
  
“Set the table, would you?” Mrs Power handed Ciaran a handful of cutlery.   
  
Diarmuid followed Ciaran into the dining room, where a long polished table shone with a rosy glow. Banks of gladioli and frangipanis obscured the sideboard.  
  
“Thought I’d better get you out of there,” said Ciaran. “My parents are disgustingly mushy. You’d think they’d been apart for eight months, not eight hours.”  
  
“It’s kind of cute,” said Diarmuid, thinking of his own parents who barely even spoke any more.  
  
“Yeah, everyone says that. But try putting up with it every single day – you’d soon be singing a different tune.” Ciaran tossed down knives and forks willy-nilly.   
  
“What does your dad do? He doesn’t look very –” Diarmuid searched for a word that wasn’t ‘scruffy.’  
  
“Professional? No. He runs a comic book shop. Most of it’s done online. He had a bunch of classic comics from when he was a kid, they’re worth a fortune now, so that’s how he can afford it.” Ciaran shrugged. “Mum brings in most of the money, predictably, but it works for them.”  
  
“And you,” Diarmuid couldn’t help adding. At Ciaran’s stare, he said, “Well, it’s not like you’re wanting for anything.”  
  
“True.” Ciaran’s voice was cool. “Do you expect me to apologise for the fact that my parents have done well in life?”  
  
“Of course not,” said Diarmuid. “But you shouldn’t put them down either.”  
  
Ciaran’s retort was stalled by the entry of his parents into the dining room, holding hands and looking for all the world like newly-weds.  
  
“Dinner will be five minutes,” said Mrs Power. “In the meantime, Diarmuid, we want to hear all about you.”  
  
“Yes – Ciaran doesn’t often bring his friends home,” chimed in Mr Power.  
  
“Do you think he’s ashamed of us?”  
  
“Surely not. We are fantastic parents.”  
  
“Maybe he’s lying about the fact that he has friends at all.”  
  
“Mum!” Ciaran scrunched up his face, managing to eke three syllables out of the word. Diarmuid hid a smile, which soon vanished when the adult Powers turned two sets of jewel-bright eyes on him.  
  
“This, Diarmuid,” said Mr Power, “is what’s called ‘singing for your supper.’”

+_+_+

The upshot of Diarmuid’s dinner with the Powers was that Ciaran’s parents invited him to a drinks party during the evening of December 23. Diarmuid didn’t know how to refuse them, as he equally didn’t know how to ask Ciaran what one wore and did at a drinks party. Drinking, presumably, was heavily involved – but that begged the question of what, and how, and how much.  
  
In a quandary, Diarmuid found himself beseeching Aidan’s help. He didn’t reveal the whole story right away – Aidan’s voluble nature was such that Diarmuid merely said, “I need something decent to wear” and Aidan’s imagination got to work, incorporating into Diarmuid’s social diary a Big Date with a Girl.  
  
They stood in Aidan’s bedroom, which, since he was the youngest of three, was far larger and better stocked than Diarmuid’s, although still nothing to the opulence of Ciaran’s. Rather, Diarmuid lolled on the bed, while Aidan dug through the piles of clothes festooning every surface rather like a pig on the scent of a truffle.  
  
“I have these jeans –“ he brandished a miniscule pair with what looked like floral transfers on the back pockets “– but maybe denim isn’t formal enough?” Without waiting for an answer, he fell upon a black shirt: “This is great ... Jesus, but it stinks. Never mind.”  
  
“Just a black trousers and a shirt will be fine,” protested Diarmuid, in vain. Aidan went off to raid his oldest brother’s wardrobe, leaving Diarmuid in temporary peace.  
  
Yet peace was fleeting, for no sooner had Diarmuid relaxed back on the pillows to contemplate his confusion over Ciaran than his phone buzzed. Puzzled as to who would be messaging him – Aidan was too stingy to text from down the hall, his sisters never bothered, and his parents didn’t know how – Diarmuid pressed ‘Read.’ The number was unfamiliar to him.  
  
“Hey Diarmuid,” it ran, “Ciaran here. Got ur no off ur fone. Hope u don’t mind. Tues nite shud b fun rite? Dress caj. xxx”  
  
Dress casual. Diarmuid felt relief mingle with apprehension in the pit of his belly. What did the little ‘x’s mean? His mother put those on Christmas cards. Were they some archaic form of expressing affection? Did Ciaran want to express affection? That was weird, but what was even weirder was the pleasure Diarmuid took in the thought.  
  
He text back: “Sure, mite b interestin 2. C u there. Gud luck wit ur results.” Diarmuid had got his that morning: a string of Cs, one or two Ds, and an A1 in Art. He was delighted with that, and deliberated adding the information to the message before deciding he’d rather tell Ciaran in person. He wondered if the polite thing to do was to return the ‘x’s at the end of his message. He’d typed in one x when he heard Aidan’s cloven hoof in the hall.   
  
Diarmuid hurriedly pressed send – just in time. Aidan swished into the room, almost swamped by material and the scent of Lenor.  
  
“Result!” he crowed, his crown of curls bursting through a stack sweaters like a fox through a hedge. “Mark’s gone off to his girlfriend’s for Christmas and left a whole bunch of stuff behind. We can nick whatever we need.”  
  
“Won’t he notice? What if he comes back early?”  
  
“I’ll just tell him Mam’s washing it.” Aidan dismissed these paltry concerns. “Here’s a pair of chinos, get them on you. Where are you going, anyway?”  
  
This was the question Diarmuid had been dreading, for no reason he could name. “Ciaran Power’s parents invited me to a drinks party.”  
  
Aidan went very still. The result was uncanny, like an action film paused at the penultimate moment. “His parents? When did you meet his parents?”  
  
“I stayed for dinner one night after helping Ciaran run lines,” said Diarmuid. “Don’t stare at me like that. It’s not a big deal.”  
  
“It is if it turns out to be some kind of coke-crazed swingers’ party!”  
  
“That’s not very likely, is it?” Diarmuid shook his head. “Honestly, you come up with the daftest ideas sometimes.”  
  
Aidan still hadn’t moved. The last time he’d stayed in one place so long it was because he’d cemented his shoes to the carpet. “And what about Ciaran? What is he to you?”  
  
“What kind of a question is that?” said Diarmuid. “He’s a friend. He is, to me, a friend. Like you are.”  
  
“Oh. Okay.” Slowly, Aidan relaxed. “Just checking.”  
  
“I’m sorry, next time I’ll submit a birth cert and family tree for your perusal,” said Diarmuid. “You have a glittering future ahead of you in the FBI, by the way.”  
  
“I’d prefer the CIA,” and Aidan bounced back to life. “They’re the ones that cover up the alien landings.”  
  
“I thought that was the Men in Black?”  
  
Aidan sent him a pitying glance. “Diarmuid, that movie wasn’t _real_.”  
  
Diarmuid shrugged slightly. Aidan was off again, and would need very little input from Diarmuid for the rest of the night. A few conversational nudges steered Aidan into the realm of his love-life.  
  
“Marisa is truly the jewel of the Raj,” declared Aidan, striking a dramatic pose.   
  
“Why, is she English?” Diarmuid looked over his shoulder, trying to see what he looked like from behind in Mark’s cream cords and a navy polo shirt.   
  
“What? No. What has that to do with anything? Her nationality is nothing to me. Although I wouldn’t fancy her if she was English.”  
  
“Still haven’t got over Kate Blumfield, have you?”   
  
Aidan scowled. “I have no idea to what you are referring. Did you hit your head hard recently? That would explain a lot. Anyway, as I was saying –“  
  
“It’s getting pretty late,” Diarmuid interrupted hastily. “I have to get home to mind the kids. But you can tell me all about it tomorrow.”  
  
“There’s nothing to tell.” Aidan followed him mournfully to the door. “Can you ask Ciaran to put in a good word for me?”  
  
“Sure, I can ask.” Diarmuid grinned and jumped out into the freezing cold. There was no sense in saying goodbye to Aidan; he never heard it anyway and it would only prolong his departure.  
  
He didn’t delete the message from Ciaran, as was his wont. He received no other communication from him, but went to bed yet puzzling over the two ‘x’s and, if he were to acknowledge it to himself, happy enough to be doing so.  
  
+_+_+  
  
The night was dirty and wet when Diarmuid ran from the nearest bus stop to Ciaran’s house. His efforts at taming his hair into a more civilised style were entirely undone by the sleet-tinged drizzle; the shoulders of Mark’s second-best jacket were speckled with dark drops.   
  
He could hear the tinkle of conversation laid over the muted roar of classical music even through the door. He rang the bell twice, for no one answered the first time. He assumed they couldn’t hear it.  
  
Just as he was raising his hand to ring it a third time, Orla threw open the door. Her eyes were bright with alcohol, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looked like a Pre-Raphelite maiden in a very twenty-first century LBD.   
  
“Diarmuid!” she cried in delight. “Come in, poor boy, you’re drenched to the skin. Ciaran – your friend’s here!”  
  
Orla ushered him inside, and for once Diarmuid was no less keen to obey an order than the one that gave it. Orla fluttered around him – “Do you need a towel? I didn’t realise it was raining! No? How about a jot of whiskey?” Diarmuid paid her little heed. His eyes were scanning the hall for Ciaran.  
  
“Looking for someone?” said a voice from behind him. Diarmuid whirled around, nearly toppling Orla from her heels. Righting herself with the ease of long practice, Orla tripped off to attend to another late arrival. Diarmuid hardly noticed.  
  
Ciaran was dressed in a severe white shirt, with a thin tie hanging open on either side of his collar. The smell of his aftershave hit Diarmuid like a bus, rendering him so stupid he told Ciaran, “You smell nice.”  
  
“Well, I try.” Ciaran was smirking. Diarmuid noticed he was drinking from the neck of an alcopop bottle. “Fancy one?”  
  
“What?”  
  
Ciaran shook the bottle. “A drink, Diarmuid. Would you like one?”  
  
“Yes, please.” Diarmuid took off his coat. A very few minutes had sufficed to leave him sweltering, what with the numbers of people swarming the house and the tropical heating level.  
  
“Okay, wait here,” said Ciaran. Before Diarmuid could protest Ciaran had insinuated himself between two hugely fat men, and was gone.  
  
Rather disconcerted, and more ill at ease than he’d admit, Diarmuid spied a coat-rack standing near the stairs. He hadn’t seen it before, so he guessed it had been press-ganged into use for the party. He went over to it, and spent as much time as he could hanging his jacket on it.   
  
It was as he was pretending to check his phone for messages that he noticed a girl lurking on the stairs. There was plenty of opportunity for this in the architecture, for the stairs ended on a shallow landing that diverged on to two separate flights leading to the wings of the house. Potted plants abounded. It was behind a large fern that the girl was hiding, every so often popping out as if to check the coast was clear.  
  
She saw Diarmuid looking at her, and frowned before sliding behind the plant once more. Diarmuid had seen enough of her face to note its likeness to Orla’s and Ciaran’s – and also its dissimilarity. This girl’s wing-mirror cheekbones were padded with fat, and she had the sad air of an unwanted puppy.  
  
Feeling a dart of empathy, for she looked as out of place as he felt, Diarmuid glanced up the stairs again. The girl was peering around the fern.  
  
“Is my mother there?” she hissed.  
  
Diarmuid took a quick recce of the hall. Orla was nowhere to be seen, and he thought he heard her voice ringing out from another room.  
  
“No,” he replied, pitching his voice low. “Do you want me to get her?”  
  
“No!” It came out as a small scream. The girl scuttled down the stairs and pressed herself into the alcove behind the coat-rack. Diarmuid was forced to make way for her, as there was not room for both of them and all the coats.  
  
This close, Diarmuid could see the acne scars and the carrot-red hair, which was distinctly coarse. But her face – once relaxed and secure in her new sanctuary – was not unpleasant, and Diarmuid found himself putting out a hand to shake.  
  
“I’m Diarmuid Golden,” he said.  
  
“Rose Power,” she sighed. Diarmuid silently congratulated himself on his discernment. “You must be one of Ciaran’s friends.”  
  
“Well, yes. How did you know?”  
  
“Please, it’s written all over you. Where did he adopt you from?”  
  
“We go to school together. And actually, he didn’t _adopt_ me – he asked me to help him with leaning his lines for the school play.”  
  
“Of course he did. It’s not like he has a photographic memory or anything, or the likelihood of him needing help with learning lines is about as great as me getting picked for America’s Next Top Model.”  
  
Stung, Diarmuid said, “I don’t know what’s up with everyone. First Aidan, now you – is it so unlikely that two people can just be friends with no suspicious reason behind it?”  
  
“Of course not,” said Rose. “Except where my brother’s involved. Diarmuid – that’s right, isn’t it? – my brother is too bright for his own good. Nothing has ever been a struggle for him, unlike me. He likes messing with people’s minds, and you, my friend, are currently top of his agenda.”  
  
“What’s he going to do, fluff his lines just to spite me?” scoffed Diarmuid. “And if what you say is true, which I sincerely doubt, who’s to say he’s after me?”  
  
“Why so defensive?” Rose smiled, a faint echo of the beauty of her mother’s and brother’s. “I fear the lady doth protest too much.”  
  
“Huh, to think I felt sorry for you before because you were alone at your own party,” said Diarmuid. “I’m beginning to get why that is, now.”  
  
“This isn’t my party, make no mistake about that. This is a chance for my parents to show off their wonderful lives, their wonderful home and their wonderful son. They’ve always made it clear I don’t make that list. Once I finish college I won’t sully their wonderfulness any longer.”  
  
Real bitterness and hurt laced Rose’s words, and Diarmuid relaxed his guard slightly. “Ciaran said you’re doing law at Trinity – that’s pretty wonderful, isn’t it?”  
  
“No, Diarmuid. Not wonderful enough,” said Rose. “But I am sorry to be such a misery-guts. I’m not usually like this, but being around my family always gets my back up.”  
  
“I still don’t understand why you’re so sure Ciaran’s up to something.”  
  
“Eighteen years of evidence, perhaps? Not to mention that you brought it up again already – rather too keen for a disinterested party.”  
  
“I just don’t think it’s fair – on him,” said Diarmuid, blushing. “Or on me, because you’re making me sound like a fool.”  
  
“You’re not a fool now,” said Rose, “but spend much longer with Ciaran, and you soon will be.”  
  
At that moment Diarmuid heard Ciaran’s low, husky laugh. His stomach tightened, and his gaze travelled unwittingly to the door where Ciaran was chatting to a distinguished older man.  
  
“Look at you,” said Rose. “You’re like a hound with a scent. Perhaps it’s already too late.”  
  
“I can take care of myself,” said Diarmuid.   
  
“I hope so.” All the levity dropped from Rose’s face. “You seem like a nice kid. Let me give you one piece of advice: don’t let Ciaran talk you into doing anything you don’t want to do. He’s very good at that, so good you won’t realise until after it’s happened. Just be on your guard.”  
  
“I will,” promised Diarmuid, half his mind already at Ciaran’s side and willing him to look over. At length he did, and signalled Diarmuid to come down to him. Diarmuid turned to say goodbye to Rose, but she was already gone.  
  
“I saw you talking to my sister.” Ciaran handed Diarmuid an icy bottle, which Diarmuid blamed for the shivers coursing through his body. “Some bore, isn’t she?”  
  
“Oh, she’s all right.” Diarmuid flicked his eyes back to the coat-stand, but Rose was nowhere to be seen.   
  
“Generous to a fault,” said Ciaran, “literally. Go on, get that down you. I happen to know where my mother’s hidden the snacks for later.”  
  
+_+_+  
  
Diarmuid hovered in the kitchen, picking over the remains of a cheese plate. Ciaran had gone off again, talking to yet more family friends and business acquaintances of his parents. He’d barely spent half an hour with Diarmuid the whole night, and had shown no compunction about abandoning him with people he didn’t know – or indeed, no people at all. In vain Diarmuid had searched for Rose, who was nowhere to be seen. With the excuse of visiting the bathroom, Diarmuid had gone upstairs; but the room with the ‘Rose’ name-plaque was firmly locked, and the faint chords of Pearl Jam dribbled through the door.  
  
Diarmuid checked his watch again. Eleven-thirty. The party was only beginning to wind down, but Diarmuid had already missed the last bus. He’d been on the point of leaving at eleven, having been on his tod for over an hour, when Ciaran materialised again and protested his leaving so vehemently that Diarmuid consented to stay a bit longer. As soon as the minute hand hit twenty past Ciaran spotted someone he ‘had to say Hi to’ and Diarmuid hadn’t seen him since.  
  
He was now seriously starting to worry about getting home. His father’s mate was a taxi driver who could sometimes be prevailed upon to help out in these situations, but he’d be up to his eyes on the night before Christmas Eve. Diarmuid’s only option was to call a hackney and pay for it himself, and he knew he had exactly five euro in his wallet. This meant asking Ciaran for a loan – if he deigned to turn up again, that was.  
  
Rose’s warning and Aidan’s worry circled Diarmuid’s brain like vultures over a dead carcass, tormenting him into frustration-fuelled anger. By the time Ciaran returned to the kitchen, it was midnight, Diarmuid had eaten all the cheese, and was just about ready to eat Ciaran.  
  
“I need to borrow a fiver,” he said curtly. “Pay you back soon as.”  
  
“Steady on,” laughed Ciaran, weaving over to him. Every time Diarmuid had seen him he’d had a different bottle in his hand. He was clearly very drunk. “What’s the rush?”  
  
“I have to get home.” Diarmuid turned his head away as Ciaran fell over a stool, with his hand outstretched placatingly.  
  
“You have a curfew or something?”   
  
“No, I just want to go home!” Diarmuid heard his voice stretch with resentful fury. He sounded like a cross child.  
  
“All right, don’t cry about it,” said Ciaran. “I’ll drive you home.”  
  
“You can’t possibly, you’re pissed off your skull,” said Diarmuid. “Just lend me a fiver and I’ll get a taxi.”  
  
“Okay, come up to my room and I’ll give it to you.” Ciaran held out his hand again. “Come _on_ , sourpuss.”  
  
Diarmuid stalked past him, ignoring the hand that Ciaran probably wanted him to take to keep his balance. He heard Ciaran chortle behind him as they went up the stairs, which only served to heighten Diarmuid’s indignation.  
  
He sat stiffly on the sofa as Ciaran rummaged through a drawer. Below, the sounds of the party raged on unabated.   
  
“Ha, knew I had some dosh here somewhere!” Ciaran triumphantly waved aloft a twenty euro note.  
  
“That’s far too much!”  
  
“Clearly you’ve never taken a taxi in this town. You’d sell your liver for less.”  
  
“Don’t you have anything smaller?”  
  
“No.” Ciaran smiled insolently.   
  
“Fine.” Diarmuid couldn’t imagine how he’d repay him, but Ciaran was obviously in no mood to barter. “I’ll be going then.”  
  
“Hang on a sec, I want to give you your present.”  
  
“What present?”  
  
“Have you so soon forgotten the day on which our dear Saviour was born? A Christmas present, you doofus.”  
  
“I didn’t get you one.” In his current frame of mind, Diarmuid wasn’t even sorry.  
  
“That’s okay. It’s more a thank-you present anyway – for your help with the play and all that.”  
  
Diarmuid squinted at him. Ciaran’s tie was long since vanished, his shirt open halfway to his belly-button. His hair was in disarray and his cheeks were flushed – he was totally gorgeous.  
  
Diarmuid’s heart plummeted as he realised what he’d just thought. Distantly, he said, “You didn’t need to.”  
  
“Good. I so hate doing things I need to – I much prefer doing things I want to.” Ciaran was sending him that brilliant, teasing smile, but Diarmuid was in too much shock to be moved by it.  
  
Ciaran delved into his drawer once more and retrieved a package wrapped in rich red paper. “You can open it now – in fact, please open it now; I want to know what you think.”  
  
“Okay,” said Diarmuid, barely hearing his own voice over the rushing in his ears. He undid the paper carefully, thinking he could save it for his own presents. Ciaran had used twice as much as he needed.  
  
Inside he discovered a moss-green cashmere scarf tied in a bow around a pair of leather gloves and a slim bottle of Gaultier².   
  
“That’s what I wear,” said Ciaran into the heavy silence. “I just had the scarf and gloves first, because you don’t seem to have any, then you said you liked the aftershave and I had a new bottle of it and ... you’re not saying anything.”  
  
“Thank you,” said Diarmuid mechanically. “I’d better be going.”  
  
“Diarmuid, is there something I should know? You’ve been odd with me all evening.”  
  
In an instant, anger smashed through the floodgates of Diarmuid’s shock. He opened his mouth to upbraid Ciaran, but was foiled by Orla opening the door.  
  
“Just checking on you boys,” she said, her voice slurred. “You’re very welcome to stay the night, Diarmuid; I can’t imagine that you’d get a taxi. You’ll pull out the sofa bed for him, Ciaran?”  
  
“I wouldn’t –“ Diarmuid began, but she had already closed the door.  
  
He looked up to find Ciaran towering over him, his eyes hooded but his gaze steady on Diarmuid’s face. “Well?” he said. “Are you going to allow me to defend myself?”  
  
“You left me alone half the fucking night,” mumbled Diarmuid, realising even as he said it what a pathetic complaint it was. “Why’d you ask me over if ...” He couldn’t bear to finish the sentence.  
  
“Diarmuid. Diarmuid!” Ciaran’s fingers found his chin and tilted it upwards. “This wasn’t just a party for my parents, it was a social networking occasion. They need me to help them. I couldn’t just run off and play with you ... no matter how much I wanted to.”  
  
Diarmuid jerked his head away, fancying he’d only imagined the way Ciaran’s hand had turned suddenly caressing. “Rose said –"  
  
“Oh, Rose.” Ciaran’s fingers were stroking the shell of Diarmuid’s ear now. There was no way the gesture could be construed as merely friendly, although it definitely fell under ‘drunken.’ “Rose still holds a grudge against me for breaking her Barbie Beach House when I was five. Everything she says is coloured by sibling rivalry. Don’t tell me you took it to heart. Diarmuid?” The fingers crept under his chin again. “You did, didn’t you? Rose is always prophesying doom and gloom on all my friends. Nothing gives her greater pleasure; she’s like the Oracle of Delphi only less amusing and kind.”  
  
“I – I don’t –" Diarmuid batted Ciaran’s hand away and stood up. “I have to go.”  
  
“But you want to stay, don’t you?” Ciaran’s breath was hot on the back of his neck. “You want to thank me for my present, and sleep on my sofa, and let me make you breakfast in the morning ... the most fantastic pancakes you’ll see this side of Starbucks.”  
  
“That sounds like a chat-up line.”  
  
“Maybe because it is?” Ciaran put one hand on Diarmuid’s waist. “I like you, Diarmuid. I want you to stay the night. But if you’re afraid I’ll impugn your manly virtue, by all means leave.”  
  
“I don’t even know what that means,” complained Diarmuid, relaxing a little against Ciaran. His arms immediately came up to trap Diarmuid in their embrace – but Diarmuid was by the second growing less eager to depart.  
  
“It means ... you’ve got to stop looking at me the way you do, or I won’t be held responsible for what happens.”  
  
“What way do I look at you?” asked Diarmuid, confused.   
  
“Under your lashes, like you don’t want to but you just can’t help it.” Something wet touched the skin under Diarmuid’s ear, and he jumped. He realised it was Ciaran’s tongue.  
  
“Oh –"  
  
Ciaran was kissing his ear, tongue bathing it in delicate little licks. Diarmuid shuddered, helpless with desire.  
  
“You’d better tell me quick,” whispered Ciaran, “sofa or bed?”  
  
“What?” The word came out as a strangled moan.  
  
“Do you want,” said Ciaran, his hand slipping lower as he traced circles on to Diarmuid’s belly, “me to make up the sofa bed for you or do you want to,” lower, “sleep,” lower, “in my bed?” And he squeezed, once, gently.  
  
Diarmuid let out a shaky sigh. He couldn’t find the words to speak, so he took Ciaran’s hand in his, revelling in the strange feel of someone else's palm against his own –  
  
And lead him to the bed.  
  
+_+_+  
  
In the morning Diarmuid awoke with a stale taste in his mouth, an army of jackhammers in his head, and alone.  
  
As he shifted across the crumpled bedclothes to switch on the light, he realised with a flare of embarrassment that he was completely naked. He could see Mark’s chinos inside-out beside the bed, and what looked liked his boxers hanging off a loudspeaker. There was a peculiar smell in the air and a patch of crusted sheet under his hip, which meant that he definitely hadn’t dreamed everything about last night.   
  
The door swung open, and Diarmuid cowered. He had about five seconds to bolt for the bathroom or pretend to be asleep, but his brain wasn’t up to making complicated rational decisions like that.  
  
“Only me,” said Ciaran, looking disgustingly perky. “Everyone else is dead to the world, don’t worry.” He quirked an approving eyebrow at everything Diarmuid was failing miserably to conceal. “I see you’re not.”  
  
“Oh god.” Diarmuid had never been so embarrassed in his life, not even after he and Aidan had been caught trying to fill the showerheads in the girls’ locker room with blue dye. He grabbed two handfuls of blanket and clutched them to his chest.   
  
Ciaran had the jump on him, as usual. He was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not looking the least bit hung-over, and fully dressed in grey tracksuit pants and a hoodie. Diarmuid checked his watch, the only item still remaining on his body. It was eight-thirty: not exactly late. Not four hours ago Ciaran had still been up – in all senses of the word. How could he possibly look so refreshed?  
  
Ciaran placed a tray on his desk, and Diarmuid’s stomach growled. “Coffee, French toast, some very kinky hors d’oeurves and a muffin. Sorry about the lack of pancakes – I couldn’t find any flour in the entire kitchen.”  
  
“That’s okay,” said Diarmuid. Ciaran handed him some toast and he bit in eagerly, realising too late that he’d also released his hold on the blanket. Ciaran was staring – not in an ‘oh my god what is that?’ way, but rather in an ‘I know what _I_ want for my breakfast’ way.  
  
Ciaran crawled into the bed with Diarmuid, accidentally brushing his leg with icy toes. Having Ciaran watch him eat was enough to make Diarmuid fumble, but when Ciaran began slowly running his tongue along Diarmuid’s collarbone he lost his appetite entirely.  
  
Tossing the toast approximately towards the desk, Diarmuid slid down so that his mouth was level with Ciaran’s and hesitantly kissed him. Ciaran didn’t force it; he lay with his head propped up on one hand as Diarmuid grew bolder, letting his tongue flick across Ciaran’s lower lip.  
  
“You’re so cute,” mumbled Ciaran, as Diarmuid drew back, a little shocked by his own daring.   
  
“Cute?”  
  
“Yeah, cute, all shy and scared.” Ciaran traced Diarmuid’s face with his finger. “And last night you were shameless, don’t you remember? Ordering me to go down on you ...”  
  
Diarmuid blushed. He had been pretty drunk, on nerves as well as alcohol. The night was one long ecstatic blur. “I don’t remember that.”  
  
“I do.” Ciaran’s dark eyes brimmed with laughter and – something else. “It was incredibly hot.” His hand was stroking Diarmuid’s bare hip now. “I don’t suppose you ... no ...”  
  
“What?” Ciaran moved his hand away, and Diarmuid’s skin felt cold.  
  
“You could ... return the favour? No, it’s too much to ask.” Ciaran sat up. “Do you want some coffee?”  
  
“Wait.” Diarmuid pushed him back down. “Do you mean you want me to ...” He couldn’t say it. Ciaran looked up at him, all the laughter now replaced by searing lust.  
  
“Suck my cock, Diarmuid.” It wasn’t an answer; it was a command. “I want your pretty mouth around my dick so bad.”  
  
Even as the thought disgusted him, the words – spoken in a voice aching with longing – thrilled him. And it was only fair; Ciaran had done it to him.  
  
“I guess – okay.” He hooked his fingers around the waistband of Ciaran’s tracksuit pants, which were already strained by his burgeoning erection. Diarmuid felt an iron fist of fear close around his throat.  
  
“Hurry,” urged Ciaran, lifting his hips. “I’ve been wanting you for so long.”  
  
Afterwards Diarmuid was surprised to find it was the tears that choked him more than anything else. He buried his face in a pillow. Eventually Ciaran’s hands found their way to the taut curve of his back.  
  
“That was so good,” he whispered in Diarmuid’s ear. “Your turn?”  
  
Diarmuid violently shook his head.  
  
“All right.” Ciaran dropped a kiss on his shoulder. “I’m gonna say hi to my parents. Take a shower if you want.”  
  
Diarmuid did. He brushed his teeth until his gums bled, but he could still taste it – feel it – smell it everywhere.   
  
+_+_+   
  
It was New Year’s Eve, and opening night.  
  
In the intervening time Diarmuid had only seen Ciaran once, for one last ‘rehearsal.’ Diarmuid still felt an uncomfortable twist in his stomach whenever he thought about it. Ciaran’s hands had been sure and supple on his skin, but he couldn’t get the better of a distinctly plundered feeling.   
  
He hadn’t been able to convince his parents to come to the play, not even to see his sets. His mother had vaguely promised to ‘look in during the week.’ Diarmuid was disappointed rather than surprised. His parents’ New Year routine was set and unvarying: hours at the local pub, with the chicken goujons and cocktail sausages distributed at midnight being the sum and sole highlight of the affair.   
  
Diarmuid was spraying on a last squirt of Gaultier² in the bathroom when Siobhan barged in, without so much as a by-your-leave. She was dressed in a denim miniskirt over hot-pink leggings, with matching pumps and a camisole top that left nothing that should have been to the imagination. Diarmuid thought it was considerably OTT for a night in minding three little girls, and said as much.  
  
“Duh, that’s because I’m not,” she said, elbowing him aside to apply lipgloss to a mouth already stickily glazed.  
  
“ _I’m_ going out tonight.” Diarmuid could barely conceal his alarm. “It’s the play’s opening night.”  
  
“You should have thought of that the night before Christmas. Mam ended up working late and Dad was out, so I’d to mind the kids. Kev was not very pleased that I stood him up.”  
  
“You’re not serious!”  
  
“Deadly.” Siobhan capped her lipgloss with an ominous snap and darted out of the bathroom. “Happy New Year!”   
  
Diarmuid followed her, intended to thrash the whole matter out with his parents. The front door slammed before he’d made it down the stairs. In mounting horror he called for his parents, but only Aoife appeared.  
  
“Where’s Mam and Dad?” he shouted.  
  
Aoife unplugged her thumb from her mouth. The only way to tell the twins apart was by their teeth. “They left ages ago. Dad said he’s got his mobile if there’s any trouble.”  
  
Diarmuid sprinted back upstairs for his phone, intending to warn Aidan and Ciaran that he’d be late before ringing his father. He wrote a simple ‘Runnin l8, cu later’ to Aidan, but the screen threw up a ‘Message Unable to Send’ banner. Cursing, Diarmuid punched in *100#, only to be informed that he possessed 0.10 euro credit.  
  
Utterly defeated, he went downstairs with a heavy heart, made only heavier by watching all three Home Alones in succession.  
  
+_+_+   
  
Diarmuid lay slumped in front of the TV, on which an old Clint Eastwood western was playing. One by one the girls had dropped off and he’d carried them to bed. Too dispirited to retire himself, he stared unseeingly at the screen as the house chilled around him.  
  
At two am, the doorbell rang. Assuming it to be pranksters, Diarmuid didn’t stir until his phone began to buzz as well.  
  
He blearily opened the door to Aidan’s apple-cheeked face. He was dancing on the spot. “Let me in, let me in! I’m half murdered with the cold. My extremities shall shortly drop off. You’ll be finding bits of my fingers strewn across the garden when the place thaws.”  
  
Diarmuid held the door open and Aidan wriggled inside. “Why the hell didn’t you come? Everyone was asking for you.”  
  
“Siobhan decided she was going out, and told me too late to do anything about it. Then I realised I had no credit.”  
  
“How brutal,” said Aidan. “Jesus, this place is like a tomb. I’d have been better off outside, it’s marginally warmer.”  
  
“The heating’s gone off.”  
  
“For the last century, it feels like.” Aidan paused. “Diarmuid, don’t take this the wrong way, but you looked like death warmed over. The play is on every night this week, you haven’t missed much – except a stellar performance from yours truly, of course.”  
  
“I guess.” Diarmuid’s phone was full of messages – five from Aidan, a couple from the other set painters, even a missed call from Mrs McCarthy – but nothing from Ciaran.  
  
“Sit down,” commanded Aidan. Diarmuid obeyed automatically and Aidan smothered him with a blanket. “I’ll make tea.”  
  
“I don’t want tea.”  
  
“You’re getting tea, so shut up and act grateful!”  
  
Diarmuid closed his mouth and tried to look suitably appreciative. It was hard, what with the way his mouth kept wanting to slide off his face.  
  
Aidan returned with two mugs of tea swimming in sugar. Diarmuid could feel plaque building after just one sip, and tactfully set the mug aside.  
  
“You can get cross again if you want,” said Aidan, after snorkelling down four cavities’ worth of sugar with tea, “but ... does this mood have anything to do with Ciaran?”  
  
Diarmuid looked at his hands.  
  
“It does, doesn’t it? Oh, shit.”  
  
“It’s not what you think,” mumbled Diarmuid.  
  
“Really, it’s not? Why don’t I tell you what I think? _Then_ you can try to tell me I’m wrong.”  
  
“All right,” said Diarmuid. He didn’t feel he had much of a choice in the matter; Aidan had on his determined face. Greater men than Diarmuid had quailed before it, particularly when it was accompanied by some sort of gardening implement.  
  
“This is what I think: I think he seduced you. I think he got you to pay attention to him and flirted like crazy with you. I think he got you drunk and I think he convinced you to have sex with him.” Aidan plinked his nail against his mug, staring down into it. “Anything sounding familiar?”  
  
Diarmuid couldn’t speak. He nodded.  
  
“Before you ask, I haven’t been hiding my psychic talent. They’re not about to ask me to write scripts for CSI either. This was not what you’d call an educated guess.”  
  
“A rumour?” suggested – hoped – Diarmuid. Aidan shook his head. “Then – how?”  
  
Aidan’s voice was barely a whisper. “Because he did all that to me.”  
  
Diarmuid didn’t realise he’d jumped to his feet until he felt warm tea soaking his socks.   
  
“ _When_?”  
  
“The –” Aidan cleared his throat “– the summer before second year. Remember that school tour to France you couldn’t aff – you couldn’t go on? Well, yeah. The third years came too, Ciaran was one of them and we ... yeah.”  
  
“Oh my God.”  
  
“And I wasn’t the only one,” said Aidan. “I went to visit my cousins in Kerry last summer. Ciaran goes to Irish college in Dingle every year, and every year he pulls the same trick. He did it to one of my cousin’s friends –”  
  
“I can’t believe this, Rose was right!”  
  
“Who’s Rose?” asked Aidan, confused.  
  
Diarmuid ignored the question. “But why? What’s in it for him? And more importantly, why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“I tried!” shouted Aidan. “But I was too mortified to tell you when it happened, never mind now. I’m not gay, you know! I like girls, I fancy girls, I want to fuck _girls_. I don’t want to be fucked by –”  
  
“You – he –”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Aidan.” Diarmuid’s hands made frantic shapes in the air. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
Aidan smiled weakly. “So was I, especially the morning after. Everyone thought I’d spontaneously got rickets.”  
  
In helpless curiosity, Diarmuid asked, “What did you tell them?”  
  
“Oh, that I’d pulled a hamstring falling off my trunk.” Aidan shrugged. “It happened on the last night in Paris, and of course Ciaran had nothing to do with me after that, so no one suspected.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Oh, he still hasn’t ...” Aidan bit his lip. “Once he gets what he wants he’s gone, Diarmuid. Total loss of contact, man. I reckon that’s half the reason he does it. You’d never get away with treating a girl like that.”  
  
“But we haven’t – you know.” Diarmuid blushed.  
  
“You will,” said Aidan, “or you’ll say no, in which case the end result is the same.”  
  
“I can’t believe this,” repeated Diarmuid. “I feel so used.”  
  
“I should have taken better care of you,” lamented Aidan. “Most of the time you hardly know you’re born. Ciaran’d have the trousers off you before you thought to ask why.”  
  
“I’m not quite that bad,” said Diarmuid. “So, what do I do now?”  
  
“It doesn’t really matter. He’ll be gone from your life soon. He’s not interested in you, or going out with you, or anything like that.”  
  
Diarmuid peered into his friend’s face. “Would you have liked that?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“Well ... maybe a little, at the time. He’s so ... yeah, okay, I fancied him. It was one of those thingies, a ‘phase.’ But I’m not really into boys. It was just him.”  
  
“I wasn’t into boys either.”  
  
“You weren’t into anyone, you great asexual freak.” Aidan heaved a gusty sigh. “This is not how I’d envisioned spending New Year’s.”  
  
“Marisa didn’t put out?”  
  
“The girl hasn’t realised I exist.” Aidan sounded momentarily disheartened, and almost entirely as if the preceding conversation had never happened. “But never fear! I have a plan ...”  
  
+_+_+   
  
Ciaran was cool to Diarmuid at the next night’s show, but it was of no significance because Diarmuid was glacial towards him.  
  
Diarmuid sat in the front row with Dervla, Sorcha and Aoife, and willed himself not to fell the old curious ache in his chest whenever Ciaran appeared.  
  
Afterwards, he was invited backstage. He extorted his sisters not to stir further than four feet from the refreshments table and left them gobbling down his share. Quite a few people were pleased to see him, and even more were pleased with his sincere compliments on their performances.  
  
Aidan rolled his eyes expressively towards first Ciaran and then Marisa before haring off in search of a ham sandwich. Marisa caught Diarmuid smiling in her direction and beckoned him over. He checked first to see who else she might be signing for, then made his way over.  
  
“Hi, Diarmuid.” Marisa smiled. She really was enchantingly pretty, in spite of the distinct odour of onions on her breath. “How’d you like the play? We missed you last night.”  
  
“I had to babysit my sisters,” said Diarmuid. “The play’s great. It looked great. You were great, too.”  
  
“So it was really great, then?”  
  
“Yeah.” Diarmuid smiled in relief.  
  
“I love kids,” Marisa informed him, apropos of nothing.  
  
“That will ... come in handy,” said Diarmuid.  
  
“Listen, I wanted to ask you what you thought of the frogs,” said Marisa. She was twiddling with her fringe.  
  
“The frogs?”  
  
“Yeah. You know, the origami frogs? From your ‘secret admirer?’ That was me.”  
  
“Oh, the _frogs_. You made the frogs? But they’re really great!”  
  
“As are many things, it would appear,” said Marisa. “Thanks. I’ve been doing origami for years now, but I’m best at frogs.”  
  
“But why have you been giving them to me?” asked Diarmuid.  
  
“Oh, I – I wanted to ask – that is, would you like to go out with me?”  
  
Diarmuid stayed in shocked silence a little too long.  
  
“Never mind, forget it,” mumbled Marisa, sporting a blush Diarmuid didn’t think even he could top.  
  
“No! It’s not that I’m not interested, it’s just – well, you see, my friend fancies you.”  
  
“Oh yeah, whatever.”  
  
“Seriously – it’s Aidan. I can’t just go behind his back. Let me talk to him first, please?”  
  
“All right.” Mollified, Marisa took a pink phone out of her pocket. “I’ll give you my number. Call me, okay?”  
  
Slightly dazed, Diarmuid wandered back to the refreshments table in search of his sisters. He found Ciaran holding court among them, doling out sandwiches like king’s largesse. Diarmuid’s blood boiled, for more than one reason.  
  
“Derv! Aoife! Sorcha! Time to go.”  
  
“But I’m not finished yet,” protested Dervla, turning adoring eyes on Ciaran. At twelve, she was just starting to get crushes that were as fierily intense and short-lived as fireworks. Clearly her latest had been bestowed upon Ciaran.  
  
“Mam wants us back by nine,” said Diarmuid crisply. It was a blatant lie, but he couldn’t bear to be around Ciaran one second longer, much less make small talk with him.  
  
Ciaran caught up as Diarmuid herded his sisters towards the exit. He smiled with such charm that Diarmuid’s knees turned to water under him. “Any chance you’ll be excused from babysitting duty any time soon?”  
  
“None at all,” snapped Diarmuid. He stalked away, not even saying goodbye.  
  
+_+_+   
  
Diarmuid and Aidan both emerged stretching and yawning from their second-to-last summer exam. It had been Geography, and a discussion of Norway’s main exports had formed the main essay question. Diarmuid didn’t know whether to be amused or afflicted by the coincidence. It was the only answer he knew well, having weaved so many fruitless daydreams of explaining it to Ciaran. Why Ciaran would be remotely interested he didn’t know, but his mind slotted Ciaran into every possible situation. Diarmuid would have been impressed by his own ingenuity if he hadn’t been equally annoyed by it.  
  
“Oh, look,” said Aidan, who’d edited all the town names on his OS map to read as swear words, “afters tickets for the debs are on sale tomorrow.”  
  
“And we care why?” Diarmuid stared at the notice board as if it would provide him with a clue.  
  
Aidan performed a two-step shuffle. “You don’t, but I do. Perhaps there’s a certain lady who might care to accompany me there.”  
  
“Still think you can wear her down with your persistence?” said Diarmuid. “I’m not sure it works that way.”  
  
“I’m not sure either,” said Aidan with unaccustomed seriousness. “But it’s the only way I have.”  
  
“Maybe I could come too, and ask that girl who did costumes for the play – Moira?”  
  
“Mary, but why would you do that?”  
  
“Marisa might be more inclined to come if people she knows are going,” said Diarmuid. “Otherwise she’d be stuck with a bunch of sixth years.”  
  
“And me,” protested Aidan.  
  
“Exactly,” said Diarmuid.   
  
“Diarmuid, I don’t know ... after all, she still fancies you a bit. She might consider it a great opportunity to get off with you, not me.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it – just be your fabulous self and you’ll turn her to putty.”  
  
“That hasn’t really worked that well so far.”  
  
“It might when alcohol is added to the equation.”  
  
“I think you’ve really hit on something there!” Aidan was much struck. Diarmuid hid a smile and the fact that Marisa possessed some choice information that forestalled any efforts on her part to become involved with him. The only way to let her down gently had seemed to be to tell the truth: that Aidan was mad about her, and that Diarmuid was (most likely, from all recent evidence) gay, or at least confused.  
  
The latter part of Diarmuid’s confidence hadn’t served to make her better disposed towards the former, but it had with alacrity ended her interest in him. Aidan was free to pursue her till the end of time, had he but known it. Marisa regarded them both as friends of a sort – Diarmuid moreso; once she was reconciled to the loss of her hopes she was beguiled by the idea of having a gay, albeit secretly so, friend. Aidan amused her with his antics and grandiose statements, but Diarmuid couldn’t detect any symptoms of attraction in her behaviour towards him. Still, there was time yet.  
  
“I’d better go,” said Aidan. “I promised Marisa I’d lend her my History notes tonight.”  
  
“Don’t you need them to study?”  
  
“God no. What do you take me for? Hey, you don’t happen to have any History notes I could give her, do you?”  
  
“I don’t take History.”  
  
“Oh well. I’ll scrounge them up from somewhere.” Aidan marched off whistling, with spirits as ever undaunted.  
  
Diarmuid watched him go with a faint smile, and turned back to the debs notice. He thought he recognised Ciaran’s hand in the design of the flyer. Afters tickets were fifteen euro each; thirty for Diarmuid, if he carried out his benevolent plan. He hated to break into his college savings, but it was the least he could do for both his friends.  
  
His thoughts were still fixed so on Ciaran, as he studied the drawing of a couple waltzing, that he thought he imagined a soft voice saying, “Hey, Golden.” He could not, however, have imagined the distinct tang of Gaultier² in the air.  
  
Diarmuid stiffened, but forbore to say anything. Ciaran, coming to stand beside and brush shoulders with him, didn’t seem to expect a reply.  
  
“Not my best work, I admit,” he said. Diarmuid felt a pang of triumph that he tried his best to quash. “I suppose I’ll have to see to getting a date for the debs soon.”  
  
Diarmuid echoed Aidan. “I’m sure you’ll scrounge one up from somewhere.”  
  
“I’m sure I will too.” Ciaran leaned back slightly. “You’ve cut your hair.”  
  
“Yeah.” Diarmuid had recently got it cropped to a silky cap that barely reached his ears. More of his college money down the drain, but he’d been assured of a summer job in the art supply shop Miss Starr had recommended him for, and he intended to save every bit of his wages for university fees.  
  
“You have enough talent to try for colleges in England, if you apply yourself,” Miss Starr had said. “A good, well-rounded portfolio is essential. That’s where Ciaran Power fell down – great skill, but too little effort. The effort is worth an awful lot to the admissions panel.”  
  
“It suits you,” said Ciaran. His smile kept flashing on and off, shaky at the corners, as clear an indication of uncertainty as Diarmuid had ever seen. “Chester misses you.”  
  
“He’ll get over it,” said Diarmuid, without rancour. Six months had whetted the edge from his anger, and allowed regret to seep in. Not enough regret to make him wish he’d acted differently, but enough for him to find shaking Ciaran from his head extremely difficult.   
  
“Yeah.” Ciaran reached out to smooth down a corner of the flyer, and Diarmuid was momentarily enthralled by his five fingernails: one on each finger, neat and slender and perfect like the rest of him. “You could ... come over, some time. To see Chester.”  
  
Diarmuid let a moment pass before he answered, a moment in which he considered agreeing and forgot how to breathe. “No. No, I don’t think so.”  
  
“Fair enough. You can’t blame a guy for trying,” said Ciaran. He sounded more irritated than hurt, but Diarmuid could still see the shakiness at the corners of his mouth.  
  
“No,” said Diarmuid thoughtfully, “you can’t.”   
  
He left Ciaran standing there and went to collect his bag from his locker. Occupying pride of place among the curling bread was a stack of multi-coloured origami paper. It had been damaged by transit, so the shop let Diarmuid have it for free.  
  
He was getting rather good at cats.


End file.
